Why Illegal Immigration Benefits No One

No one faults the hard working illegal immigrant, who is trying to pursue the dream of a better life, or escape poverty. The problem is the criminal activity that goes along with the trade. There is nothing noble about drug smuggling, kidnapping, bondage, identity theft and a host of financial crimes that tie into the trade in human flesh.

Organized criminals run this business and they engage in multiple streams of income, often using the illegal aliens in their other illegal activities. Unfortunately, it seems that legitimate corporations are knowingly complicit in the activity, also.

Here is a quote in a recent story from the New York Times:

Saying the hiring by companies nationwide of millions of undocumented workers is often a form of organized crime, Mr. Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor, said the government will now attempt to combat the practice with techniques similar to those used to try to shut down the mob.

"We target those organizations, we use intelligence to define the scope of the organization, and then we use all of the tools we have whether it's criminal enforcement or the immigration laws to make sure we come down as hard as possible and break the back of those organizations," Mr. Chertoff said during a news conference at the headquarters of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division.

IFCO Systems North America, the subject of the recent raid was also found to be supporting the identity theft crisis:

Company supervisors knowingly hired illegal immigrants, provided them with housing and transportation to and from work, and even reimbursed one undercover agent for the cost of obtaining fraudulent identity documents, Homeland Security Department officials said.

An examination of the company's payroll of 5,800 employees found that just over half of them had Social Security numbers that were either invalid, belong to a dead person or did not match up with names on file, investigators said.

Link to article, here.

There have been a lot of updates to this story. The LA Times is quoting a federal agent as saying the illegal immigrants were working in unsafe conditions.

"There was a lot of drilling, cutting, dismantling of old pallets, pneumatic nail guns, power saws. Most of these guys were working in jeans, tennis shoes, short-sleeve shirts; some had sawdust in their hair," he said. "No legal facility would let workers work in those conditions."

There is nothing honorable about this trade and it is shameful that certain seemingly legitimate corporations are in collusion with organized criminal activity. Substandard working conditions and the host of crimes that go along with this trade victimize everyone (including the illegal immigrant) so the few (primarily criminals) can reap enormous profits.

So far as the other criminal and potential terrorist activity that goes along with unsecured borders, here is a link to a previous post I wrote.