Anecdotal Evidence of the High Cost of Cheap (Illegal) Labor

I went to play basketball this afternoon with some of the twenty-somethings that I can rarely keep up with today. One of the semi-regulars came in with a bandage on his knee. I kidded with him a bit about going after some "crash cash", but when he told me the circumstances surrounding the incident it really bothered me.

It turns out the guy who rear-ended him only spoke Spanish and seemed like he knew nothing about how things work in this country. Someone else also hit that driver after the first collision, my friend seemed to think the fellow had no brake lights. The Spanish speaker attempted to leave the scene of the accident, and my young friend had to reach in the guy's car and forcibly restrain him. He then told the people behind them to call the cops. The cops came and took the Spanish speaker directly to jail.

I am going to go out on a limb and say the fellow was an illegal alien. I hope whatever company hired him up here is real happy with the dollar or so an hour they saved by bringing up this poor guy. If there was any justice, they would put the employer in the same cell as this illegal. It will be $5,000 worth of damage to my young acquaintence's car, I don't know how much to the other two. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt. Our current system is not even fair to that illegal alien that is sitting in the Benton County jail tonight. He has been lured up here, with winks and nods from our duplicitous government, with hope of gain that has blown up in his face.

The border is still not secure, 6,000 more national guardsmen to shuffle papers by 2008 won't fix it either. Workplace arrests have dropped to almost nothing. A guest worker program is not the answer. People like this young Spanish speaker simply are not prepared to navigate urban American life and they should not be allowed to- for everyone's good.