Time for an immigration-enforcement bill

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The House is about to debate -- and hopefully pass -- an immigration enforcement bill, HR 4437. It's about time.

Let's start the debate by dispatching the biggest myth: "Americans won't do certain jobs, that's why we have to import foreign labor." There are no jobs Americans won't do. No matter how physically difficult, intellectually challenging or personally dangerous an occupation might be, Americans will do the job that needs to be done -- provided the compensation is right.

We used to understand that dirty, dangerous jobs deserved good pay, even if the job did not require much education. Meat packers used to make a solid middle-class wage. They were not rich, but the arduous and bone-chilling work of carving up animal carcasses and packaging them for grocery sale was considered a decent job. Middle-class meat packers supported a home and family and were the strength of their communities. Now, with the huge influx of illegal alien laborers, the job is being relegated to low wages and few benefits. Home ownership, along with other upwardly mobile middle-class expectations, is being left behind.

With decent wages and health benefits big, medium and small businesses can find plenty of citizens or legal immigrants to take almost any job. But that isn't necessarily in the interests of the current captains of American industry. Elite business executives pay themselves enormous salaries and stock options, even when they fail. The ratio between what is paid employees and what is channeled into the pockets of top executives is totally out of sync with past pay differentials in our country. Yet these very same patronizing executives, who pay themselves colossal sums, say they can't afford to pay their employees a living wage and thus import foreigners to do the work on the cheap. And if foreigners aren't around sometimes they are brought in either legally, through the H1B visa program, or even illegally. Just recently Tysons Company executives were found guilty of collaborating with coyotes to smuggle illegal aliens across the border. Some employers, of course, claim a shortage of educated or trained Americans to fill available tech related jobs. That's when H1B visas are called for as if there were no alternative, but that's not true. A shortage of educated labor doesn't mean we need to bring in more foreigners, it means we need to educate, train and motivate our kids. Bringing in foreigners depresses the pay level for such tech jobs and that is certainly no way to encourage young people to study science, engineering or mathematics, rather than become lawyers.

Furthermore, without taking the easy path of bringing in foreigners to do tech jobs a number of those jobs could be filled by training disabled people. Yes there would be a cost involved in such training and in redesigning the workplace but the disabled will never get it if we flood our tech market with young, healthy, cheap workers from India, Pakistan or China.

HR 4437, to its credit, at least partially addresses big business' addiction to foreign labor by preventing them from "gaming" the labor market by unlawfully bringing in and taking advantage of illegal immigration. By demanding all businesses use the Basic Pilot Verification Program and verify every employee they hire is in the country legally, we will end the "wink and nod" system of hiring those with forged documents.

This is certainly a step in the right direction but HR 4437 could have been much stronger by eliminating another huge magnet for illegal immigration: public education, welfare and health benefits.

By providing a free education and free emergency-room health care, we attract enormous numbers of illegal immigrants from all over the world. By not addressing this issue, H.R. 4437 leaves intact a major draw for illegal aliens to do everything in their power to get into the land of plenty, so their families can receive a treasure of benefits.