http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050605 ... -8567r.htm

Letters to the Editor
The Washington Times
Monday June 6, 2005

High costs of cheaper labor

It's not hard to understand the sleight of hand that Chesapeake Bay-area businesses and other employers who hire (often illegal) immigrant labor are using ("Bay firms depend on foreign workers," Page 1, Wednesday). They pay their foreign workers wages Americans cannot afford to live on, pocket the difference, and seek to justify their actions by claiming "American workers simply are not available."
Meanwhile, the real economic cost of that labor in this high-cost country is paid by middle-class taxpayers in the form of Medicaid, public hospitals, food stamps, subsidized housing, free school lunches, social services and myriad other big-governmenttransfer schemes.
The moral: There is a free lunch if you can get someone else to pay for it.

K.C. MCALPIN
Falls Church