"Business lobby helps scuttle immigration curbs in Texas" reads the headline of a Reuters news report.
This is not an isolated incident of businesses that rely on illegal immigrant labor intervening to protect their source of cheap, illegal alien labor. Business interests in Arizona scuttled anti-illegal immigration legislation during this year's legislative session and the Salt Lake Chamber ensured that Utah passed a state "guestworker" program that turns Utah into a sanctuary state and makes illegal aliens virtual indentured servants.
When you think about it, some American businesses resemble drug addicts in that they are hooked on an illicit substance, in this case low-cost, easily exploited illegal labor, and like drug addicts, businesses lie, steal, and cause untold collateral damage.
They lie when they tell the authorities on one hand that they do not knowingly hire illegal aliens but then turn around and do everything possible to protect their illegal workers.
The lie when they call illegal aliens "immigrants" and they lie when they accuse those of us who oppose illegal immigration of being anti-immigrant.
They steal from the taxpayers as they shift much of the burden of their low-paid employees to taxpayer-funded programs and they steal from American workers by replacing them with illegal labor and by driving wages and benefits down.
They encourage others to commit illegal acts in order to feed their addiction. They facilitate the acquisition and use of fraudulent documents and employment-related identity theft that impacts millions of Americans, including millions of innocent American children. And like drug addicts without a conscience, they show no compassion whatsoever for the victims of identity theft and their families.
Like drug addicts they impose burdens on our health care system. They send their uninsured illegal alien employees to hospital emergency rooms for health care and drive the cost of health insurance up for other Americans and employers.
They use their ill-gotten gains to feed their habit. In order to protect their source of illicit workers, businesses hooked on illegal labor finance high-paid lobbyists and donate generously to political campaigns in order to ensure that elected officials keep the borders open and turn a blind eye to their illegal employment activities.
Like addicts who support the legalization of drugs, employers hooked on illegal labor argue that the only solution is to legalize their activities and grant amnesty to their illegal workers.
Like rampant illegal drug use, the addiction to illegal alien labor contributes to "a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government" and results in a culture of corruption that permeates American Society.
Isn't it time that American employers acknowledge their addiction to illegal labor and seek treatment? And isn't it time that we arrest and incarcerate these employers just like we do other addicts if they are unwilling to get help and turn their lives around?