Opinion: There are no jobs that Americans won't do

Some people like to say that illegal aliens take the jobs that Americans refuse to do. But while this sounds nice, I think it is blatantly false. People who promote free trade and globalism use this argument to justify lax enforcement of immigration laws.

But the truth is, illegal workers only serve to depress the wages of all Americans, because there is no industry where illegal workers comprise a majority of the workers.

They become a portion in each group, and are the portion that is willing to work for less wages and lower or no benefits. They are the portion who deprives the lowest skilled American workers of jobs. And the irony of this is that these are usually legal immigrants or minority group members.

Even in menial, low paying, job categories Americans are still the overwhelming majority of workers. Wages are depressed whenever you introduce millions of unskilled illegal workers, all of whom will work for less and are just grateful to have jobs.

Lately, Mexico's biggest export is "unskilled workers" and their biggest import is "money orders sent home from the USA." This situation is probably good for Mexico and good for employers who want the cheapest labor, but it is bad for everyone else.

In 2005 there were approximately 7.2 million illegal immigrants working in our civilian workforce. They accounted for 4.9% of the 148 million workers we had.

And while 31% of them were in service jobs, and 19% were doing construction work, they were in no case essential to these industries.

They just displaced American workers who couldn't take wage and benefit cuts.

To some, these percentages sound as though illegal aliens are necessary for these jobs to get done. Yet, illegal immigrants actually comprise a very tiny portion of the workforce here, just 4.9%.

So even though they have high representation in some industries, they are still not the majority. Moreover, even though their total representation is small, it is still big enough to make the difference between a good economic condition for us (like 4% unemployment) and a horrible one for us (like our current 9.1% rate).

Just remember that every American worker displaced by an illegal alien ends up drawing unemployment insurance, food stamps and sometimes even welfare. This is the hidden cost of illegal immigration that often goes unseen by us.

No other nation on earth permits or encourages illegal immigration like we do. No other nation has "sanctuary cities" in which local authorities refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in enforcing federal law. No other nation elects politicians and judges who think law breakers should be entitled to generous taxpayer supplied benefits.

We currently have a President, Barack Hussein Obama, D-Kenya, who has PREVENTED local authorities from enforcing immigration laws, out of sympathy for the illegal immigrants.

And President Obama has family members (his uncle Omar and an aunt Zeituni) who are here illegally, and drawing welfare benefits. Both of whom are here illegally on expired visas, but are still allowed to stay in violation of law.