Immigration

Herein lies the source of America's problem, to the extent that it is a problem, with illegal immigration:

Employers, who helped shape a major immigration bill over the last three months, said on Sunday that they were unhappy with the result because it would not cure the severe labor shortages they foresee in the coming decade.

In addition, employers expressed alarm as they learned that the Senate bill would require them to check a government database to verify that all current and former employees — aliens and citizens alike — were eligible to work in the United States.

Blaming immigrants for coming across the border to take available jobs is like blaming hungry people for eating. The nativist faction of the GOP insists that the immigrants are the problem. The nativists insist that in order to solve illegal immigration, the United States must become an armed camp with thousands of miles of fenced borders guarded at gunpoint, and official ID papers reminiscent of Eastern Europe during the cold war. They ignore completely the real source of the problem: an economic engine that runs on a fuel of cheap, exploitable immigrant labor.

There is no solution to the supply side of illegal immigrant labor without addressing the demand side. Crack down on the businesses who provide the jobs for which immigrants cross the border, and you will solve the problem to the extent that it can be solved. If the businesses who exploit undocumented workers are punished for doing so to the full extent of the law, and if the immigrants who are already here are provided a pathway to voting, tax-paying citizenship, equilibrium will be reached within a generation.

But it has to stop being about scapegoating the brown people. That way lies madness.