OK John, your points are well taken and deserve a more serious effort at refutation.

People from other countries would not be coming to the US were it not for the fact that seriously monied individuals and companies/corporations are eager to hire them. Agribusiness has long been the most obvious exploiter of illegal labor, but they're not alone.

To the limited extent that undocumentated laborers and their families may manage to receive public benefits funded by taxpayers, the effect is to subsidize the employers who are responsible for attracting these workers and who are evading any responsibility for providing them with compensation and benefits that most of us consider to be "normal."

Such employers, of course, are the primary beneficiaries and proponents of contemporary right-wing politics. Is it necessary to point out the hypocrisy?

Actually, I feel a certain degree of agreement with this particular application of laissez-faire economics. The system is wildly illogical, inconsistent, and unjust, but it works really well as a way to get certain kinds of work done cheaply and efficiently. The currently ongoing house-by-house rebuilding of New Orleans, for example, would not be remotely possible if undocumented Hispanic workers were not available to the typical cash-strapped homeowner who has been royally screwed by the insurance companies that reported record profits in 2005 despite the hurricane-damage claims that they should have paid out.

Irrational demands to "build a wall and keep 'em out" are simply unrealistic. The American economy would fall apart without the contributions of these undercompensated workers. Political campaigning that emphasizes this "issue" is very rarely anything more than fearmongering, and it indeed does distract the public from more substantive issues.

As far as health care is concerned, if we were indeed to have a simple single-payer system like the rest of the industrialized world, the simplest and cheapest policy would be to care for everyone, regardless of citizenship (just like other countries do for visiting Americans). Eliminating the huge amounts of money spent on red tape and on the effort to deny health care whenever possible, even to Ameicans with paid-up insurance coverage, would free up plenty of resources to allow doctors and nurses to do their jobs.