Lax immigration policies allow immigrants to be exploited for their cheap labor. "The broken immigration system has allowed employers to create an underclass of workers, which has effectively reduced working standards for all workers. Immigrant workers are over-represented in the highest risk, lowest paid jobs" of the meat-processing, restaurant, and landscaping industries ("Responsible reform," AFL-CIO, 2006). The U.S. Department of Labor found that American poultry processing plants were 100% non-compliant with federal wage and hour laws. The presence of illegal workers in these industries has effectively created a workforce that is inclined to tolerate often horrific abuses of safety and sanitary precautions, as well as 'missed' paychecks or unpaid overtime. Furthermore, "the Department of Labor also estimated more than half of the country's garment factories violate wage and hour laws, and more than 75% violate health and safety laws" ("Responsible reform," AFL-CIO, 2006). Workplaces that are dangerous for immigrant workers are equally dangerous for their U.S.-born counterparts who work beside illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants may come to U.S. shores with the aim of bettering their lives, but instead find themselves in poorly-paid, dead end, and unsafe jobs without access to legal recourse or health insurance -- and increasingly, U.S. workers are finding themselves in the same position.

"The immigration controversy revolves around questions of national identity, security in a post-Sept.-11 world and the workings of a $12 trillion economy. Illegal immigrants are essential workers on American farms, in hotels and restaurants and on construction sites. An estimated 7.2 million illegal [immigrants] provide much of the unskilled muscle that the U.S.A.'s Information Age economy requires: 36% of insulation workers, 29% of farm hands and 27% of butchers" (Lynch & Woodyard 2006). All of these industries, not coincidentally, are some of the poorest-paid arenas of the U.S. economy. And not only is the pay poor, but there are few opportunities for workers to advance within such business or to obtain union representation. Unionization is difficult in industries dominated by illegal workers despite the efforts of legal employees to organize. Illegal workers are often, for obvious reasons, unwilling to take a very public stance for higher wages and benefits such as health insurance.

Instead of supporting the 'right' of individuals to work illegally in the U.S., it is more important to ask why workers immigrate in the first place and allow themselves to suffer such unjust conditions. Immigrants almost invariably come from nations where there has been a breakdown of the political