Yes, Robbie you are dead on about those "wetback" workers.

When I was a Masonry Contractor "wetback" Bricklayers and Mason tenders (laborers) depressed the price per 1K brick (non-union or prevailing wage (gov't contract)) labor from $580 to $350 / 1K in the mid 1980s era. I'll have to admit they were some hard working MoFos.

I was a Stone Mason contractor primarily so they did not compete directly with us but I worked along side them on jobs. Considering that they might make 10% to 25% of that wage in Mexico or Central America, that's what they told me, they had the motivation to work hard and for long hours. They literally ate beans and tortillas on the jobsite

How they worked this is out is that the Brick contractor was a Mexican national or Mexican American citizen here legally and he got the contract then got his brothers and cousins, from south of the border, to help him do the work (on the cheap). I never saw the INS raid a construction job site ... Bricklayers are not "unskilled labor." Construction is one of the exceptions to what I said but the trade and casual laborers in construction are not rocket scientists. Most are high school dropouts, ex-cons, drunks and druggies notwithstanding the few students working summer jobs. Let's face it being a non-union construction laborer pushing a wheelbarrow or digging a ditch is shit work -- but someone has to do it.

My grandfather was a legal immigrant in 1910 who by the Great Depression was a full partner in a ladies clothing factory in NYC. His factory ran on immigrant labor, albeit legal at the time, America had an open borders policy back then -- that built this nation.

Maybe, we need to allow more "guest workers" into this country at a "guest workers' wage" by this I mean no Social Security or Medicare deductions or employer matching contributions -- money as non citizens they will never benefit from. They and/or their employers should bear the burden of their and their families social costs -- medical, legal, schooling other. The guest workers should only have access to these social services in proportion to the taxes they pay -- in other words a fair deal. They just come here for a better life like my grandfather did. Most "wetbacks" are decent hard working people I know I have worked with many in construction.

We (USA government foreign policy) does feed the cycle of violence south of the border. If some of the illegals are coming here as refugees from that violence, they risk coming here to escape the misery we created in the first place -- that is the irony in the current situation.

We should take advantage of their low cost labor in the countries where they live and in turn create decent jobs there. We are adjusting to a post industrial economy. The low value manufactured goods jobs have been transferred to lower wage economies. Now that China is developing their own consumer market, Chinese labor will be heading in the same upward direction as Japanese or Korean labor has/did. If I had a choice of building a new factory in Asia or nearer to home in Mexico or Central America, if the political climate were the same (it's not -- Yankee Go Home!) I would build that factory closer to home.