Well, John, we certainly do agree on one thing: one of the many ways in which the rich manage to keep getting richer and richer these days is the exploitation of migrant labor. And I certainly agree with you, also, that natural-born Americans and legal immigrants, indeed all working people, suffer from the situation almost as much as the illegals.

However, I don't agree with your classifying the agribusiness fatcats as "scapegoats," because my understanding of that word's definition includes the proviso that the scapegoat is falsely or unfairly blamed for various troubles. The employers of illegals, to different extents, can very fairly be accused of guilt. Indeed, in many cases, they're the leading scapegoaters. The biggest and most powerful among them, through their lobbists and "think-tank" front organizations, are the leading cheerleaders and sponsors of the media-blitz offense against their most wretched employees, deflecting attention from themselves while shifting the blame to those very folks upon whose backs they are building their fortunes.

The trickiest aspect of this whole scenario is that, to a cerain extent, we all benefit economically from black-market/gray-market labor. If you think food prices are high now, just imagine how much higher they'd be if agricultural employers were paying FICA taxes (social security) for all their workers, let alone any of the other benefits that are generally associated with legitimate employment.

A large share of the long, hard, house-by-house rebuilding of New Orleans has been and continues to be performed by young Hispanic men. Much of this effort is being paid for by very hard-pressed homeowners and small businesspersons. Regardless of whether their resources include a few taxpayer-paid grant dollars, these individuals determine where their money is spent, and desperately need to squeeze every penny if they hope to bring their rebuilding projects to completion. Even though things might be different in an ideal world, cheap off-the-books labors is a major factor in making anything happen around here.

It's almost impossible NOT to be complicit to some extent. My sons and I did an awful lot of work for ourselves, all day every day for almost the entire calendar year of 2006, and never once drove to the shape-up in front of Lowe's to hire any Latino workers. However, I have to admit that, when my roofer and my insurance adjuster colluded to replace my aluminum roof for half-again as high a price as I paid for it just two years earlier (but at no out-of-pocket expense to me), I came home one afternoon to find at least a dozen Hondurans and Mexicans swarming all over our house, tearing off the damaged aluminum faux-shingle panels so fast and furiously that I couldn't get to my door without dodging the falling debris. It took a mere day and a half to finish the job; I have no idea how much of my insurance money went to each worker, but I'm sure none of them pocketed even half as much as the adjuster who signed off on the deal or the roofing contractor who persuaded him to do so.

(I thought of writing a blues, "Sheet metal fallin' down like rain," but never did come up with a second line or any more verses.)