Letter: Borders will tighten if businesses follow law

Monday, July 17, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

Voters demand that the government establish immigration control, now!

Supervision over the masses of unregistered and undocumented border crashers can, and must, be regained. The generally acknowledged reason for this onslaught is these people will do anything in order to acquire the U.S. dollar. One seldom heard solution is to simply enforce existing laws restricting any payments for work or welfare to lawfully documented residents, and invoke heavy sanctions on violators.

This massive migration feeding an overflowing labor force was created through many thousands of legal temporary visa contract workers, augmented by countless thousands of legal and illegal immigrants. The pool is saturated at all levels with underqualified or underpaid workers.

Cheap labor from diverse pools provides businesses greater profits through exploitation; allowing many industries to reduce wages and cut or eliminate health insurance, pensions, stock options and other benefits, and include possible union busting. Daily we see more shoddy production in hospitality, educational, automobile, housing and even information technology industries.

Needed corrections are stymied by businesses' concentration on the bottom line. Congress is embroiled in petty party infighting and will do nothing meaningful while dreading upcoming elections, possibly even afterwards.

What to do about it? We must insist upon release of the government's databases of legal and illegal Social Security numbers, followed by strict enforcement of existing laws prohibiting payments to illegals.

Removing access to the U.S. dollar could curtail border breaching and induce violators to go elsewhere.

Richard E. Law, Las Vegas