I can't believe I'm about to link to a Glenn Beck article. The CNN talking head regularly expounds some of the most hateful, stupid rhetoric you will find on the tube. But he hits an important point here, calling for the government to issue more visas and green cards, and for bigger fines on businesses who hire illegal workers.

Maybe the problem isn't that the job they're offering is "too hard," maybe it's that the wages they're offering are "too low."

No one paints the undersides of bridges for fun, they do it for the money. That's how capitalism works.

How capitalism does NOT work is when we collectively look the other way as companies exploit illegal labor for their own benefit.

The unspoken truth is that these businesses don't hire illegal aliens because they can't find American workers, they hire illegal aliens because they don't want American workers. And it has nothing to do with wages.

Illegal aliens mean no workers comp claims, no age, race or sex discrimination lawsuits, no healthcare premiums, no unions, and no demands for raises, vacations or bigger offices. In fact, illegal immigrants are the perfect employees because they're not employees at all; they're corporate slaves.

Economist Dr. Thomas Sowell once said "Blacks were not enslaved because they were black, but because they were available." Can't the exact same thing be said for illegal aliens? They're available and we're allowing them to be exploited in the name of cheap groceries.

Is the price of fruit really the standard we want to live up to as a country? Is that really who we've become?

I don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but immigration is a top issue here, maybe even more important than Iraq. So it's not good to see the GOP set aside work on immigration legislation:

As they prepare for a critical pre-election legislative stretch, Congressional Republican leaders have all but abandoned a broad overhaul of immigration laws and instead will concentrate on national security issues they believe play to their political strength.

In other words, they are more interested in keeping their jobs than in you losing yours to illegal workers.

And their track record on national security, now that our military is bogged down in Iraq while Bin Laden parties in Pakistan, is not something to brag about.