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In the United States, I believe that illegal immigrants do impact the earnings of citizens. There are unethical companies who hire illegal immigrants for a wage much lower than minimum wage, which makes it hard for companies who have to pay a legal wage to compete.

The flip side of this is that when companies do pay someone a low wage, they can charge less for their products and services, which means that prices stay lower.

The focus in the US has been on the illegal immigrants themselves, how to stop them from coming into this country and how to catch them when they're working illegally. Instead I believe the US should focus on the companies and the people who hire illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are just trying to survive and make enough money to send home to their impoverished relatives in other countries, while the companies who hire them are preying on their desperation and hurting American workers in the process.

If we truly want to solve this problem, we need to focus on catching the employers, not the employees! Stop building a wall at the Mexican border and use that money instead to investigate companies who hire these workers. Start a new section of the INS that does random inspections of companies who are likely to hire illegal workers like in the agricultural and construction industries. Have them go around and require workers to produce their identification, and go through the employer's records to make sure they are filling out I9's and paying a legal minimum wage.

If companies are hiring illegal workers, publish that information in the paper and encourage people to boycott those companies. The only way to keep illegal workers from coming here is to take their jobs away from them. The only way to do that is to put those companies out of business.

Learn more about this author, Helen Richardson.
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