Immigration Politics: A nation of hypocrites on illegal immigration

This columnist has it right about the politcal hypocrisy and demagoguery and our underlying dependence on cheap "illegal" labor. We don't want to pay more for the fruits, vegetables and meat on our tables. But her solution - nationally imposing e-Verify (the electronic system for verifying that workers are legal) so that "undocumented workers will stop crossing the border"- is not the answer. A rational, legal system for enabling migrant labor at fair wages is. 

A nation of hypocrites on illegal immigration | Cynthia Tucker: "As House Republicans searched for waste, fraud and abuse in the federal budget, they quickly learned that there isn’t enough dumb spending to put a major dent in the deficit. So they ended up sacrificing some of their own sacred cows, including money to police the borders. ...

If Congress were composed of rational, level-headed folks, its leaders would immediately point to the folly of wasting money on futile efforts to seal the southern border and instead pass comprehensive immigration reform. ...

But a nation scarred by the recent recession — furious over job losses, beleaguered by continuing debt and foreclosures, uncertain about the future — has cast some of the blame for its economic woes on illegal workers. And the country’s political class has eagerly clamored aboard the demagogue wagon, promising harsh laws to make housing, education and health care impossible for undocumented workers to obtain.

But not jobs. After all, we still need them to clean offices and pluck chickens and pick peaches, even if we won’t admit it." Atlanta Journal Constitution