Mexico and the U.S. both exploit illegal aliens

Fixing our immigration policy is like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.

Mexico seems to have turned illegal immigration into a $14 billion economic development program, without making any investment, but at the expense of its poor people who have to leave their country to send that money back to feed their families. And the United States has made it a fast-growing industry, where businesses are profiting from the cheap labor while making an end-run around labor regulations that honest employers honor.

Twelve years ago, when I was a labor official, immigrants told me they sent money back to Mexico with one of their own because they didn't trust the Mexican postal service. Money transfer was a cottage industry then; now the banks and the Mexican government have turned it into an electronic industry.

We talk about how Mexican "illegals" are exploited in the United States, but the worst exploitation may be that done by the Mexican government. It does nothing and may even encourage the poor to flee to the United States. According to immigrants, they leave because of the corruption and inability to find work. The United States victimizes immigrants because, on the one hand, we put up "help wanted" signs to entice them to come, then we exploit them by paying cheap wages and resent them over the mounting costs of education, medical care and public safety.

Last Nov. 30, KUED aired a must-see and most telling documentary, "Shadow of Hope," showing how poor Mexicans have no choice but to risk their lives trying to cross the border if they want to care for their families. It follows the lives of Mexicans from Juchipila, Zacatecas, to Wendover, Utah, and shows how that rapidly growing population is impacting our communities

People from a rural town in the state of Zacatecas, my parents' home state, speak painfully of how they have to leave their community, their loved ones, in order to care for their families; and then of the abuse and exploitation they endure while trying to cross the border — extortion, mistreatment and deception. In the Mexican border towns, illegal immigration is a growing industry.

The Mexican border officers do not see their job as preventing people from leaving the country, rather that of keeping traffic moving and working with those who make money out of transporting people over the border. Once across, they are left to fend for themselves, often robbed and abused by bandits, exposed to the dangers of the Southwest desert without water.