Written By : John Hawkins

One of the arguments incessantly made by supporters of illegal immigration is that illegals are doing jobs “Americans won’t do.”

However, this a bogus comparison.

Illegals often don’t have car insurance or health insurance. Many of them don’t pay taxes. Of those that do, you have to assume they cheat as much possible. Why not dramatically under report your income, claim you have 8 kids, and get a big earned income tax credit if you’re an illegal? The chances of getting caught are small and if you do, you just get deported. Then, you can sneak back across the border, get a new fake ID, and start the process all over again with a clean slate a few months later.

Ask yourself how much less money you could get by with if you “lived like an illegal.” If you had no car insurance, no health insurance, cheated on your taxes, and were able to simply skip out on your bills, couldn’t live just as well for significantly less money?

But, here’s the real kicker: American citizens, including the ones who have their wages undercut by illegals, including the ones who lose their jobs to illegals, have to pay more to make up for the fact that illegals don’t pay their bills. Those “free” emergency room visits for illegals aren’t so free for the rest of us.

But still, we need those illegals don’t we? I mean, if they weren’t here, those jobs would just go unfilled — wouldn’t they? Judging by this story in USA Today, it looks like the jobs left behind by illegals who ran into the long arm of the law are being filled just fine:

When federal agents descended on six meatpacking plants owned by Swift & Co. in December 2006, they rounded up nearly 1,300 suspected illegal immigrants that made up about 10% of the labor force at the plants.

But the raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents did not cripple the company or the plants. In fact, they were back up and running at full staff within months by replacing those removed with a significant number of native-born Americans, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

That was the most extreme example of what has become an increasingly common result of the raids: “They were very beneficial to American workers,” according to Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain.

“Whenever there’s an immigration raid, you find white, black and legal immigrant labor lining up to do those jobs that Americans will supposedly not do,” said Swain, who teaches law and political science.

Exactly who is filling the jobs has varied, depending on the populations surrounding the plants:

• Out West, one of the Swift plants raided by ICE, had a workforce that was about 90% Hispanic — both legal and illegal — before the raids. The lost workers were replaced mostly with white Americans and U.S.-born Hispanics, according to the CIS.

• In the South, a House of Raeford Farms plant in North Carolina that was more than 80% Hispanic before a federal investigation is now about 70% African-American, according to a report by TheCharlotte Observer.

• Throughout the Great Plains, a new wave of legal immigrants is filling the void, according to Jill Cashen, spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents 1.3 million people who work in the food-processing industry. Plants are refilling positions with newly arrived immigrants from places such as Sudan, Somalia and Southeast Asia.

Of course, not everyone is happy to see illegals being deported:

Catherine Singley, a policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, said the post-raid increases in salaries were also necessary for Americans to accept the harsh, dangerous working environments.

She said wages did not plummet in recent decades because of immigrants undercutting Americans, but because employers took advantage of the immigrant population fearful of seeking help from authorities.

So, the illegals who came into the country illegally, stole Social Security numbers, didn’t pay their taxes, and then got “free” insurance on everyone else’s tab aren’t part of the problem? They’re just poor, innocent victims?

Does that make sense? ..Or, is it more likely that once the illegals were forced out of these jobs, the employers had to pay what the job was actually worth on the free market and then American workers flocked to fill those positions?

I’d say the latter.

PS: Despite the fact that being against illegal immigration is often cast in terms of racism or “anti-immigrant sentiment,” notice that many of the people who benefitted most from illegals being deported were minorities and immigrants. Since percentage wise, minorities and immigrants don’t do as well economically as white Americans, they’re also the people who are most likely to be directly competing with illegals for jobs. That’s why isn’t a race issue or an immigrant issue, it’s a looking out for Americans first issue.

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