Immigrant Exploitation

From Dory at Wittenberg Gate:

Whenever people exist in an underground culture, they are vulnerable to exploitation. We see this among teen runaways, the homeless, or those who participate in illegal industries, such as prostitution, drug trafficking, and pornography. Wherever the law cannot be brought in to hold people accountable, abusers, criminals and exploiters will flourish.

So why are so many people working so hard to perpetuate a situation in which illegal immigrants exist in just such an environment? Why do they claim that as they do so, they are working for the immigrants? What are illegals to do when their employer doesn't pay, they fall victim to domestic violence, their kids are molested, their landlord doesn't provide running water, or their home is burglarized? They can't risk exposure by calling in the appropriate authorities, and their exploiters know it.

My regular readers know that I don't get political very often on this site, but as we seek a Christian response to the recent debates about U.S. immigration, I find myself frustrated that this point is not being clearly made. The case has been well made that illegals are exploiting our system and our generosity, but little has been said about how they are themselves exploited by an underground culture we allow to exist by failing to prevent illegal entry into this country.

I keep hearing that immigrants are taking jobs Americans won't take. Is it that Americans won't do the work, or is it that they won't do it at wages below the minimum wage and under conditions that OSHA and labor unions would never allow? It seems to me that the same people who argue for minimum wage laws, claiming any less pay would be exploitative, are also arguing for letting undocumented workers work here for less than minimum wage. Where are the labor unions protesting the working conditions of migrant farm workers? Why is it okay with these folks that immigrants are coming here illegally and becoming a part of a permanent, exploited underclass they have little chance of escaping?

Read the rest. Dory addresses a few other arguments that people make to support the maintaining the illegal immigrant population as a subservient class.