When you focus only on the jobs that Justich and Ng calculate illegal aliens hold in the United States, the odds aren't much better. "Undocumented immigrants are gaining a larger share of the job market, and hold approximately 12 to 15 million jobs in the United States (8 percent of the employed)," wrote Justich and Ng. At the upper end of their range, that puts the combined forces of the Border Patrol and ICE at a 909-to-one disadvantage.
But the truth is the U.S. government dedicates only a small fraction of its immigration law-enforcement officers to worksite enforcement. According to testimony presented in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration last June by Richard Stana, the Government Accountability Office's director of Homeland Security issues, ICE used the equivalent of just 90 full-time agents in fiscal year 2003 for that task.
Stana told me this week there has not been much change since 2003 in the manpower ICE devotes to worksite enforcement, and that a "large part" of that modest force is devoted to enforcement at "critical infrastructure" worksites, such as power plants and airports, that could be targeted by terrorists. That leaves a small remnant of agents targeting more ordinary employers of illegal aliens.
"If you take the 2003 number of 90 agents devoted to worksite enforcement," said Stana, "within that 90, there is a subset, and it's a rather larger one, that's devoted to worksite enforcement that could have a nexus to national security, which means if you take 'x' out of 90 it leaves 90-minus-x to do traditional worksite enforcement in areas where there are high concentrations of unauthorized workers."
The upshot: Illegal aliens can work in the United States with virtual impunity, and employers can hire them with virtual impunity. In fiscal 2004, for example, DHS informed only three U.S. employers it intended to fine them for hiring illegal aliens.
"In its fiscal 2007 budget justification," Stana testified on March 28, "DHS requested funds to support the addition of 206 positions -- 171 of which are special agents -- to conduct worksite enforcement."
Assuming that will give ICE somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 agents doing worksite enforcement nationwide, and taking Bear Stearns' low-end estimate of 12 million jobs held by illegal aliens, that would bring the ratio of illegal-alien-held jobs to worksite-enforcement agents to about 40,000 to one.