Mr. Andante employees a goodly number of Hispanics, Pakistanis, etc. Not a one of them showed up for work on Monday, April 7 and not a one was fired with the exception of one; it was discovered he had used forged ID and was, indeed, “illegal”. This is a small, “start-up” company and they don’t want to risk being penalized.

The gentleman was a good, decent, hard worker and the company regretted losing him. No further action was taken; he was just quietly let go.

No doubt the larger corporations thumb their noses at the penalties, but small companies have more to lose.

Steve, you are correct that many of these jobs need to be done and we don’t have 10 million extra workers to do them, because they tend to be short term and require people to move around to obtain employment.

There has to be some planning and organization to solve the problems associated with the issue. If there was a program, not a re-run of the Brazeros program, that could provide the workers in a legal fashion, most of the problems would be resolved.

The workers need reasonable wages, housing, and transportation. The employers need a guaranteed supply of workers at a known cost. This is very possible, not pie-in-sky. All it takes is the will to actually solve the problem.

Farmers aren’t making money, while the cost of food rises. There will be increases in costs if they fix the system, but there will be decreases in the cost of the whole system if there is a stable program in place.

It probably won’t happen, because too many people are making money from the corruption in the current non-system.

That’s true, Van, and it is a legitimate concern… but to borrow Bryan’s tomato-picking example, instead of an illegal immigration problem there would probably be… at least in the short term… a $9/lb-tomatoes problem, a split-families problem, an increased-poverty-in-Mexico problem, an ugly-American-international-image problem (yes, I know, lots of things contribute to that), and from a GOP perspective, a too-many-GOP-base-employers-hit-with-felony-charges problem.

Then there’s the problem of distinguishing American citizens from immigrants, and legal immigrants from illegal immigrants. My apartment complex hires Hispanic gardeners who are American citizens… I know, because I registered them to vote. These two brothers speak fluent English to me, and Spanish among themselves. They drive to Mexico to visit family about once a month. They are Mexican in appearance, if one can make such a generalization. Do you propose having them carry papers and show them on demand? If not, what if they get caught in one of those felony round-ups by mistake? If so, what kind of citizenship is that? “Ihre Papiere, bitte…”

I’m omitting several parts of the issue here for time and space considerations, but let me just put it this way: Nothing is ever simple, especially immigration.

(BTW, the brothers assured me in 2000 after I first registered them that they were going to vote for Gore. I, too, voted for Gore that year, much good it did any of us. I’m reminded of Carville’s quip: “Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we’d lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I’ll be damned if all those things didn’t come true!”)

As it stands now, many employers are paying to import illegal immigrants. In fact, this is not confirmed by the way, I’ve heard that some meat packing companies are having job fairs in Mexico to recruit illegals.

If we actually went after the employers, there would not be an illegal immigration problem.