Found here: http://acertainslantoflight.net/?p=1925#more-1925

THE GREAT UN-AMERICAN BOYCOTT IS A RIP-OFF AND UNADULTERATED BLACKMAIL
Posted by Bernard in Immigration, Politics, Current Events, MSM, GOP, Democrats, Borders, Pres. Bush, News, Business, Congress, Senate, Polls, RNC, Economics* Saturday April 29, 2006 at 12:12 pm

Come Monday, May 1st, a rag-tag phalanx of hundreds of thousands of illegal alien border-jumpers,*bookended by Marxist organizers, leftist, agenda-driven Latino activists, and naive, misguided do-gooders,*will take to the streets of America in a mighty show of force whose ostensible purpose is to shut down American cities, American businesses, and American classrooms in order to demonstrate just how indispensible 12 to 20 million lawbreakers have become to America’s economy.

But what the marches and economic boycott are really all about is blackmailing the United States Congress (they have long had*President Bush in their hip pockets) into granting them amnesty, citizenship, “full legalization,” and, as outrageous as it may seem to we bona-fide American citizens, all of the rights and prerogatives that the U.S. Constitution affords. Indeed, this well-orchestrated, in-your-face affront to legitimate American citizens is all about an entitlement mentality run amuck and a Congress (particularly the United States Senate) obsequiously bowing to the demands of Mexican and Central American interlopers behaving as if they were red-blooded Americans. And, truth be known,*it’s also about*our elected representatives from both political parties engaging in a Faustian pact with lawbreakers and the business interests who knowingly hire them: to wit, a quid pro quo*exchange of amnesty and citizenship for future votes and continuing cheap, taxpayer-subsidized labor.

On the outside looking in and lost in the shuffle: the people who most deserve representation — the American middle class — but who have been forsaken by duplicitous power brokers In Washington D.C. and the businesses who lobby them and fund their PACs. What the majority of Americans want — border security first before any consideration of immigration reform legislation (if it’s even needed at all) — gets absolutely no traction with the McCain, Kennedy, Specter crowd in the Senate (America’s version of Rome’s Praetorian Guard) and certainly not with the occupant of the Oval Office.

Phillis Schlafy frames it well as “the ripoff of American workers and taxpayers” that it is:

… the costs the taxpayers are forced to pay for social benefits for low-paid workers are astronomical. The National Research Council reports that an immigrant to the United States without a high-school diploma consumes $89,000 more in government services than he pays in taxes during his lifetime.

Low-paid illegal aliens obviously pay very little taxes, but they cash in on all sorts of benefits paid by other taxpayers, such as schooling for their children, emergency health care, housing subsidies, Earned Income Tax Credit, and law enforcement. If the 20 million illegals are legalized, they will also become eligible for Medicaid, and that’s a real break-the-bank prospect.

These figures don’t even count the rapidly growing underground economy, in which millions of illegal aliens are paid in off-the-books cash. That enables both employer and employee to avoid paying taxes, and enables employers to avoid paying workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, and assorted other taxes.

If the Internal Revenue Service collected all the taxes that should be paid by the underground economy, our current budget deficit would disappear overnight, according to the Bear Stearns study released last year. The Americans who pay taxes are giving a free ride to those who are not paying taxes, and a 7-cent increase in the price of lettuce should not be on our worry list.

And Alan Tonelson, writing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reveals the “labor shortage” ploy for the crass ruse it is:

However, the most important statistics available show conclusively that, far from easing shortages, illegal immigrants are adding to labor gluts in America.

Specifically, when adjusted for inflation, wages in sectors that are highly dependent on illegals have either been stagnant or have actually fallen.

When too many workers are chasing too few jobs, employers typically cut wages, confident that beggars can’t be choosers. What U.S. Labor Department data reveal is that the wage-cutting scenario is exactly what has unfolded recently throughout the economy’s illegal immigrant-heavy sectors.

Take restaurants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants comprise 17 percent of the nation’s food preparation workers, 20 percent of its cooks and 23 percent of its dishwashers.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, though, inflation-adjusted wages for the broad Food Services and Drinking Establishments category fell 1.65 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Ten percent of the nation’s hotel workers are illegal immigrants, the Pew Center estimates. But the BLS data show that their inflation-adjusted wages fell nearly 1 percent from 2000-2005.

In the booming construction industry, illegal immigrants make up some 12 percent of the work force. But from 1993 —when median home prices began surging at a record pace — through 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in the sector rose only 3.02 percent. And from 2000 to 2005 — the height of the boom — inflation-adjusted construction wages actually fell by 1.59 percent.

These wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make clear that these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They’re facing shortages of native-born workers who can accept poverty-level pay.

So what*should Americans do — Americans for whom “no taxation without representation” seems a sacred*right for which their forbears long ago fought and today’s*Washington elite has*foresaked? Well, do more than just wring your hands and hope it all goes away. Apathy — apathy in voting and apathy in contacting your elected representatives and apathy in wielding your economic clout*– is inexcusable when so much is at stake. Don’t just talk about it; do something about it.