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Immigration hypocrisy across the map

By Bruce Maiman
Special to The Bee

Published: Friday, Jul. 30, 2010 - 12:00 am

Do as I say, not as I do. That's how we've handled illegal immigration in this country. Forget the setback in Arizona's controversial immigration law: We really don't want to solve our immigration problem.

At every turn, we talk at cross-purposes with ourselves.

We're told immigrants crossing our border illegally come here to make a better life for themselves. But we're told they're taking jobs from legal American citizens, a notion we find wholly unfair.

Yet, the same people who complain about that also complain about welfare fraud and citizens who cheat the system on the taxpayer's dime all because they choose not to work, a notion we find wholly unethical.

Americans who want work can't get it because employers would rather hire illegals for less, which we find utterly greedy and downright unpatriotic. The employers save money by paying lower wages to those who shouldn't be here. Employer savings aren't passed along to consumers who should benefit from cheaper wages through lower prices.

Meanwhile, the citizen denied a job applies for government assistance, paid for by both the taxpayer who doesn't save money through cheaper products via lower wages, and by the employer who thought he could save money by hiring illegals.

Unions fail to protect members denied jobs at construction sites, hoping instead that illegals will stay here, become regularized and bolster organized labor's sagging ranks.

Paragons of free enterprise like the chamber of commerce and the editors of the Wall Street Journal think it wrong to blame employers for illegal immigrants entering the United States, but their answer at a time of severe economic contraction is to increase legal immigration quotas to compete against illegal immigrants rather than ensure that American businesses hire American workers.

Democrats clamoring to extend unemployment benefits say nothing when those same jobless Americans are denied the right to earn a day's pay. They prattle on about principles of equity and fairness yet play favorites with illegals at the expense of the legal so as not to offend a growing Latino population they hope to register as party voters.

Republicans defy their traditional principles of patriotism, nationalism and faith in free enterprise to placate businesses that benefit from cheap labor at the expense of the patriots who support their party.

Arizona passes a law, frustrated that the federal government won't enforce existing law, yet two-thirds of Arizona employers ignore their own state law mandating they verify an applicant's immigration status through E-Verify, and no business has lost its license for not following the law, according to the Arizona Republic. (Only two have faced sanctions.) Even their police agencies went rogue, each developing different policies on how they intended to enforce the law.

Our federal government acknowledges the illegal immigration problem, yet enables it. Thousands of illegals swarmed post-Katrina New Orleans to clean out, tear down and rebuild a devastated city. Though the Davis-Bacon Act requires that a wage equal to the prevailing union wage in the community be paid to all workers, the federal government waived the law, making it legal to pay the majority of illegals nearly 40 percent less than legal workers.

Yet the government is happy to take Social Security taxes from illegals with phony Social Security numbers, knowing they will never collect a dime from Social Security.

Even when technological advances like an ID card encoded with tamper-proof biometric data promise a solution, privacy advocates scream about Big Brother and Fourth Amendment privacy rights.

The biggest hypocrites of all? Us.

Polls say a majority of Americans support Arizona's law, but a UCLA study finds Americans hire more day laborers than any other sector of the economy. I repeat: This country's largest employer of illegal immigrant day labor is the average American homeowner.

You thought it was agriculture? Construction? No. It's your neighbor getting the lawn mowed, the house painted, the drywall installed or the roof repaired: 49 percent of all day labor employers are homeowners.

I've no idea on the fate of the now legally challenged Arizona law or its impact, if any, on any future immigration debate. But when you hear all these facts working at cross-purposes from all sides, it's hard to say we aren't just a little bit two-faced.

Every significant group in our society has too much self-interest in illegal immigration to do anything about it. Unions, politicians, city governments with their sanctuary city policies, businesses that hire illegals, and even the average taxpayer – everybody's got an excuse. We seem to be completely incapable of effectively dealing with the problem of illegal immigration, apparently because we don't want to.

Links:

UCLA study

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/30/292453 ... z0vZZTU0va