The not-so-secret foreign energy source

The employment of low-wage employees is addictive. Hiring illegal immigrants means that businesses get workers for low wages, don’t pay social security and unemployment taxes and, for sure, don’t contribute to pensions or health care. Illegal immigrants either have to let the illness or injury “run its course” while destroying other body systems or reluctantly go to a charity hospital where taxpayers will cover the tab, keeping the employer from losing any more of the “bottom line”.

When Americans do complain about worker exploitation in developing countries, American corporations claim that if the overseas workers didn’t earn pennies an hour, the cost of consumer goods the corporations sell to Americans would be significantly higher. That shuts up most of the opposition.

If Americans weren’t so blinded by their own greed, they would argue that keeping jobs in America would improve wages for all, allowing people to afford higher-priced goods. The people could also argue that corporations could lower executive salaries and benefits, as well as the profit margins, to minimise price increases.

President Bush wants the government to recognise and permit more immigrants. He believes it will help improve the nation’s workforce. He is right. Most immigrants, transient illegal immigrants or future citizens, are hard workers. However, flooding American businesses with low-wage and minimum benefit employees allows businesses to increase their profits: a goal well within the political philosophy of this administration, but opposed by the reality that companies earn their profits not because of country-clubbing executives but from the sweat of their workers.