It is an incredibly puzzling thing that advocates for lax immigration laws argue that illegal immigrants do the work that American workers refuse.
Outsourcing is great for low prices at Target and Walmart. Increasing cheap labor stateside with a flood of guest workers in competition with the US unemployed is ludicrous.
We may as well shoot ourselves in the foot — or at least shoot the unemployed.
Here’s an idea: employers should pay a living wage to Americans and Americans should be willing to pay it. We are talking about our neighbors down the street.
Second, illegal immigration flattens wages for US workers. For Christ sakes, unemployment rates among African Americans are an ongoing insult — 14% unemployment rate among African Americans in Los Angeles, twice as high as among whites, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Why should the US invite more low-paid immigrants when people are unemployed in Watts?
This is the first time I have seen an immigration story framed with these issues in mind. The Los Angeles Times opens:

Drexell Johnson and his Young Black Contractors of South Central Inc. are hungry for work — and when polite requests for an opportunity are rebuffed, they’re not afraid to raise a ruckus.
After Johnson was cut out of a contract when Staples Center was being built, he drove to the construction site, spinning 360-degree rolls and kicking up doughnuts of dust until, he said, a bulldozer nearly ran him down. In Torrance, his group staged a mock hanging in front of an automaker’s office. And earlier this month, they hauled a makeshift “slave ship” to an Inglewood mall development to symbolize economic injustice.
The tactics may seem outrageous, but they underscore the rage and frustration that Johnson and his cohorts feel about losing out to other workers in the region’s construction boom. Their anger is fueled by a 14% unemployment rate among African Americans in Los Angeles, twice as high as among whites.

Of course, Democrats and Republicans are posturing for the “Latino” vote, as the story notes:

“The Democratic Party cannot afford to ignore the tension and anger among blue-collar African Americans and whites here, because they feel [immigrants] are taking their jobs,” said Kerman Maddox, a Los Angeles public relations executive who has worked on several Democratic campaigns. “Everyone wants the emerging Latino vote, but at what expense?”

Congratulations to California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer for having the spines to fight for a guest worker program restricted to farm work.
And as far as winning the “Latino” vote in the grandest of US racist tradtions, it appears the prized “voting block” is divided:

Latinos themselves are split on the issue. A Pew Hispanic Center poll last August found that 34% of American-born Latinos surveyed believed that illegal immigrants hurt the economy by driving down wages, compared with 55% who viewed them as an economic benefit by providing cheap labor. The survey found that 32% opposed a temporary-worker program, while 59% favored one.

Well, maybe not that divided. After all, majorities rule.
Still, the diversity is something news editors and politicians overlook in their search for the silver bullet to grab a bigger slice of the perceived “Latino market.” That market is a pretty diverse crowd of people with some pretty diverse backgrounds resonating from Spain to Argentina to Mexico, Cuba to Nuevo York. Some are Europeans. Some are Native Americans. Some are African. Some are Asian. Some are all mixed up like the rest of us.