Of course illegal immigrants will "work for less." They don't have to pay taxes at all now, and under Bush's plan they will have to pay taxes for only -- at most -- three of the last five years. Not only that, but illegal aliens don't require their employers to comply with OSHA regulations, overtime and minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, disability laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, a slew of oppressive environmental regulations, and 4 million other ways the government has developed to make it extremely expensive to hire legal employees.
Instead of creating a separate class of citizens who are immune from oppressive government rules, how about relieving all of us -- even us shiftless Americans -- from the cost of government?
I thought all these trade agreements the free-trade fetishists have pushed on us over the years already allowed corporations to take advantage of cheap labor in other countries -- countries that don't have the panoply of oppressive government regulations that make it so expensive to hire American workers. Doesn't NAFTA already allow us to buy inexpensive goods made by Mexicans in Mexico?
In addition to discriminating against American citizens in favor of illegal immigrants, Bush wants to continue our immigration policy of massively discriminating against immigrants who live farther than walking distance from the United States. America's immigration laws are applied only to immigrants who are separated from the U.S. by an ocean. But if they live near the border and can run across it, they're in.
Even if one accepts Bush's theory that we need more immigrants to do the jobs that lazy, shiftless Americans won't do, isn't it possible that Korean immigrants, Italian immigrants or Indian immigrants would work hard too? But they can't run across the border to America, so they're out of luck. (Unless you are spokesmen for the Taliban, in which case there's a seat waiting for you at Yale.)
Since when did conservatives start encouraging people to walk more? What are we, a bunch of Al Gores now?