Who says you are wrong?

Excellent article. Sadly, with reference to assisting young people who have been released from incarceration, there is a reluctance to do so, based on the fact many have been burned when attempting to do so.
With regard to the Latinos who come here for jobs, the low-wage jobs here seem like heaven compared to the $4.50 per day minimum wage in Mexico. I am not against Mexican labor. I just want to see the border secured, for the following reasons:
1) We need to regulate the numbers who are overwhelming our social systems.
2) We need to ensure that terrorists don’t utilize our porous borders to enable the next attack.
3) We truly need to cut off the flow of drugs across that border. Just this morning, I read an article which stated the Mexican Army seized an aircraft from Venezuela containing 2.5 tons of cocaine. Those involved weren’t intending to try to sell that in Mexico.

A country which does not control its borders cannot say it is capable of defending itself. Nearly all members of Congress have violated that portion of their oath of office ’to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’.

Sadly, the American people are complicit in this, because we haven’t kicked them out of office for non-compliance.

Joe:

I have to disagree with any assertion that Americans will not do the jobs illegal immigrants do. The people who make these comments often refer to themselves, but such comments are not applicable to a significant number of Americans.

I think there are two primary reasons why illegal immigrants have taken over certain sectors of American employment (the most important being homebuilding and landscaping). Building homes and landscaping requires communication among team members. Imagine trying to lift a 40 foot wall without being able to communicate, or to instruct someone where to place a window. It would be almost impossible. Illegal immigrants show little inclination to learn or speak English, and they refuse to speak English even when they can. Once a "critical mass" of spanish speaking people are employed in an industry they push out all English speaking people (and prevent others from entering) since no one can work as a team.

Second, illegal immigrants do not pay any income tax. They do pay sales tax (assuming there is not a huge black market), but no income tax. I ran the numbers to figure the tax burden for a SINGLE person making $10 per hour, working 40 hours a week (yearly income is $19200). I assumed such a person was self-employed (as doubtless most illegals are so their employer is not liable for tax fraud). Plus, self-employment is often a common classification in construction and landscaping. Anyways, a self employed person would owe $1285 in income taxes and about $2721 in self employment taxes (both of these numbers assume no legitimate self employment deductions, the person makes pure profit on each $10) for a total federal tax burden of $4006, about 21% of his income. If the person lived in Ohio, he would owe $331 of Ohio state income tax, 1.7% of his income. If he lived in a city he would owe 1-2% of his income, and if he lived in an income taxing school district he would owe another 1-2%. He would have a tax burden of about 25%. This would mean that someone could do his job for $7.50 and not pay taxes and have the same after tax income. The American is in no way better off than the illegal immigrant, in fact the illegal is better off because both have the same after tax burden, but the legal taxpayer pays for his access to government services (through taxes) while the illegal does not.

It is hardly fair or rational to assert that Americans are greedy and the like while illegals are hard working and thrifty. They merely benefit by breaking the law. The government (and taxpayers) are actually giving them an indirect subsidy to work for lower wages because the IRS does not prosecute these cases. If Bush and Co. were serious they would get the IRS to start prosecuting illegal immigrants and employers for tax fraud, and would start seizing the assets of both.

Well said, Steve Sparks.
Herr Professor: the US is replicating the post-WW2 German guest worker experience, and similar "guests" have put France in a ditch. The German young male population lost to war left a huge labor pool deficit.
In our case, some 30 million young American lives have been sacrificed to "reproductive rights" by abortion since Roe v. Wade. Consider them casualties of a culture war. So we have 12+ million illegal "guest workers" that we now can’t do without, won’t speak our language, making us de facto bilingual, and are the 2nd largest source of Mexican foreign exchange?
I never see any chatter about that.