BBQ, you and I are in complete agreement. But the illegals are here, working in jobs Americans could do and having their education and healthcare paid for by us BECAUSE WE WANT THEM HERE!

Your son might be a good person to ask about this. Ask if the illegal Mexicans were suddenly not available to do his drywalling, how long would it take him to get Americans to do the job? Could he ever expect to get Americans to work as hard as the Mexicans for the same wage? (The free market has set the value of labor for drywalling houses in your son's area--it's what he's paying the Mexicans!)

My guess is he'll answer that there's no way he could get Americans to do the work. Even if he could find them, they wouldn't work as hard, they'd probably be less reliable and they'd certainly expect a higher wage.

Multiply that scenario by hundreds of thousands of employers and that's why we have so many illegal immigrants flooding across our borders. They could be stopped, for sure. But there would be lots and lots of small--and large--businesses which would feel the effect, maybe even going out of business. That's why there has been so little attention paid by Congress to immigration reform. The politicians are hiding behind the debate for or against amnesty. All that is a delaying tactic so that they don't really have to address the issue of securing our borders.

Business certainly doesn't want reform, and if the truth be known, the general public is also pretty comfortable with the work done for them by illegal labor and wouldn't want to "trade up" to American workers who would not work as hard, be less reliable and cost more.

The bottom line is WE DON'T WANT IMMIGRATION REFORM.

That being the case, the chances are pretty high that, like it or not, we'll keep paying for the "fringe benefits" (education, healthcare and the cost of crimes done by the criminals that cross our borders with those that want to work honestly) that the businesses who employ illegal workers are responsible for, but who don't pay for. When you think about it, the situation is not an awful lot different from when the floods of European immigrants came into the U.S. 70-80 years ago. They did work that Americans here wouldn't do, for wages less than Americans would accept, and under working conditions that were even criminal. We paid for the education of their children and their healthcare back then and we still are. Not much has changed, has it?