A lot of people see undocumented immigrants in sweatshops and get the causality wrong-- they think immigrants cause sweatshops, rather than tolerance for sweatshops by the government helping to breed the recruitment of undocumented immigrants.

I'm not sure you can neatly say the causality runs one way or another.  But to the extent that would-be sweatshop owners set up shop because they know they can get the labor to work in them, then yes, you can say immigrants cause sweatshops.  And to the extent that the presence of sweatshops help lure more illegal immigrants, then it works the other way around too.

But what is the evidence that the government "tolerates" sweatshops anyway?  Are there sweatshops that the government declines to go after even after knowing about them?  Is this an issue of funding of government inspectors?  What's the basis of saying the government is tolerating this problem?

Finally, it needs to be said that most undocumented immigrants here don't work in sweatshops at all (e.g. domestic workers, farm workers, day laborers etc.).  So while focusing on sweatshops may suit organized labor, it doesn't get at the main problem of illegal immigration.

As far as I can tell, the government, at least the one we have now, is more than happy to pressure wages through the guest worker program.

Minimum wages don't necessarily have a big impact since the web allows people to transfer work across the border without a border guard saying no.

And how do you impose tariffs or minimum wages when people trade under the radar?

Nationalism is an illusion for a lot of people, including myself, since I consume information every day from multiple contents and this exchange is enabled by the english language, not US dollars.

Removing the need for domination, in the form of arbitrage, will take a while but wages are a sloppy way to distribute wealth and create certain psychological modalities that must be overcome.

Wages can be raised, but the market will react. I read a book on NAFTA and it talked about how Swingline Staplers were made by robots in the US but by hand in Mexico-- because the labor was expensive in the US and cheap in Mexico.

The China economy will be interesting if they learn how to make goods cheaply for their much larger population, etc... and US citizens will snap up the leftovers, maybe?

We can perhaps conclude what the priorities were when there were something like 25,000 Border Patrol (now ICE) agents in 2003 and only 150 or so personnel tasked with workplace enforcement. To be fair, there were only 400-some as of 1999. But that that meager number dropped says something.

That roster is increasing, and indictments have also increased, but there's a long way to go.

Jail or fine a few, and Presto! You won't have to police them all.

Deterrence is one of the main reasons for punishing crime.

Every discussion I read about regarding illegal immigration is centered on the immigrants. Let me say that I have absolutely nothing against the folks coming here to find work and wages to help support their families. It's only human to do so. I do find it irritating how much hatred and loathing is directed at these folks. Anyway, I oppose illegal immigration because it hurts American workers but I think it is dead wrong to just try and take punitive action against the illegals who are acting in a rational economic manner and only desire to do better for themselves and their families. The people I fault and the people I think should be the focus of our law enforcement efforts are quite simply the employers. How long do you think it would take for the flow of illegals to cease if, in the next six months, several CEO's of major corporations were imprisoned for their ongoing employment of people they know are not allowed to legally work in this country? Throw in several hundred smaller business operators from around the country and I think the message would come across loud and clear that to hire illegals is an offense that will be taken seriously and that for the employers responsible there will be a heavy financial and personal price to be paid for their violations of the law. Yes, that would mean jailing some rich white guys and some of their henchmen, but I do believe that the example of those once respectable violators of immigration law doing real time in prison awaiting trial would cause the number of employers willing to take that risk to shrink almost to nothing overnight. If there are no jobs for illegals here in the US there will be no illegals in the US. Lets start cracking down on the people who are providing the opportunities for illegals instead of the desperate souls trying only to better themselves and their families because our businesses beckon them to come. After all, do we not also go after and prosecute the people who buy illegal drugs and not just the dealers? Do we not also go after the Johns who give prostitutes their business? We go after drug users and Johns in an effort deny the prostitutes and drug dealers of the profits they are in the game to get by drying up the market right? I don't know why this option is never seriously discussed or considered. I think with the adoption and enforcement of such a policy we would quickly see the policy discussion shift away from illegal labor to labor shortage. Isn't that something that would also turn the economic tables in favor of the American worker?

See my March 5, 4:07 reply above.

I don't know any family, or anybody for that matter, who uses an illegal alien for child care or any sort of domestic work in a private home who could not afford to pay, say, $10/hr. Do you? Harried middle-class moms don't hire such people, unless your idea of a harried middle class family is one that spends all their money "just living," to include Pilates, season Redskins tickets, two Lexuses, a shrink for their 9-year old, and an oversized house payment on an oversized house with oversized utility bills. In which case they will just have to deprive themselves.

And if it's child care at a state-licensed centers you're talking about, in my recent experience, at least a substantial majority of them are Americans, and more would be at $10.

Besides, bunky, any fool would know that in a jail or fine situation such as I proposed, a harried mom would get a fine.

Just to make this clear, and everyone else can skip over this comment.

Both Drupal and MT allow the non-administrator authors of entries to edit and delete comments, and I'm sure WP does as well. I don't know what MyDD uses, and maybe they don't allow that. I don't see anything at MyDD allowing comments to be "troll" rated, just 1, 2, or 3. I don't know the real life names of "DMIer" at MyDD or ElanaDMI at this site or whether they're the same person.

All I know is that I posted a comment at the MyDD URL given above earlier today, and now it's missing. And, there are two comments referencing me, including one from "DMIer". Yet, there's no comment from me on that thread, making those comments referencing me appear to come out of the blue. All that makes me suspect that it was DMIer who deleted the comment, but, since MyDD has deleted other comments from me in the past, it could indeed have been one of their administrators instead of DMIer. If you find out send an email to hotsopdotcom *atsign* yahoo.com

Forgive my naïveté but I’d like to suggest perhaps a new approach. It seems to me that if immigrants knew that they were entitled to a minimum wage and that they were well aware that if they worked for the minimum wage or better or informed the DOL when employers tried to pay them less than minimum wage that they would not be threatened with deportation that very likely they wouldn’t work for less than minimum wage. It’s all a matter of expectations. Also, if immigrants were allowed and even encouraged to bring their families with them then the money they earned wouldn’t leak out of the country so much. It seems to me that the idea that money would be better spent informing all immigrants who want to come of their rights to a minimum wage and their responsibilities to participate in the tax rolls rather than building walls and temporarily holding back those that are going to get here eventually or literally die trying might be worth debating.

I know good folks are frightened of losing jobs but so long as the cost of living imbalance between countries is as stark as it is and corporations are infinitely more mobile than either labor unions or government regulators the choice isn’t going to be of whether jobs are lost but how: workers coming in vs. companies going out. In the long run only equilibrium of labor costs across the globe will save jobs and I would guess that that would occur more rapidly if we bring the workforce to where American labor unions and government regulators have access to them. I understand if this is of little consolation to those whose jobs would be lost. This might include mine as I am not in a particularly insulated profession.

Lastly I’d like to express a deep disgust for immigration policy that prefers skilled immigrants over unskilled immigrants. Not only is it blatantly racist but it these are the immigrants who really are going to take the jobs that we’re supposed to be educating ourselves into now that regular jobs are ever harder to come by. Also, these are the folks who are most desperately needed back in their own countries. Not that they shouldn’t be welcome here, but I certainly don’t think they should be preferred.

This is the real issue, and why there will never be anything done to prevent illegal immigration. There are too many industries that depend on hiring labor in ways that do not conform with US law.

If existing law were simply enforced, then companies would have to pay the minimum wage, provide workman's comp and obey OSHA regulations. These laws are not enforced for the same reasons that there will be much grandstanding by some Republicans, but no effective action.

Yes. Restaurants as well.