Today, everyone everywhere in the country seems to be talking about the immigration suppose, more appropriately, the illegal immigration assure. Everyone from presidential hopefuls to heavily watched network news anchors and reporters have made the topic a nightly headline account. Day after day, members of the United States Congress pledge to do something about border security while ignoring the biggest threat to this country, an economy hopelessly addicted to slave labor.

The imbalanced nature of the US economy isn’t a five paged document in a file stamped Top Secret and locked away in a concrete vault beneath the Pentagon. It’s written plainly in 5^th grade text books for elementary school kids to read. And it didn’t just start with slavery; it began with indentured servitude or bonded labor.

In the 1600s, most of the white laborers in both Maryland and Virginia arrived there from England. These indentured servants were to work for little or no pay for about seven to eight years to pay serve their passage to the New World. After their time of service was over, they were free to leave and do whatever they pleased. Their former owner would then replace them with another indentured servant. It was on such a system that the economy of the colonies blossomed.

This system was a system in which laborers were not paid exquisite compensation for the work they did on a day to day basis. Instead, workers were exploited and locked into forced labor. The resulting effect of this was that the market got accustomed to being supplied by cheap labor, forming an unsound foundation for the economy of any nation. It was alarm of the failure of this unsound, tenuous economy that led Southern States to attempt to secede from the north rather than give up their slaves.

Although the Civil War was fought over slavery and eventually ended it, southern Jim Crow laws kept blacks from improving their position and many found themselves once again at the mercy of white landowners, racially segregated, disenfranchised and with very little or no education. Cheap labor remained abundant.

Fast forward to 2007. The topic everywhere is about illegal immigration and cheap labor. The president claims that illegal immigrants are doing the jobs that neither white nor dim Americans care to do and that immigrants are essential for the stability of the economy. An interesting stance since nearly 4.5% of the population (6.9 million people) is jobless. And many of those working are struggling to make ends meet. According to the president, this country is a nation unable to sustain itself. Illegal immigration is necessary for the US economy. In fact, it is his intention to give legal status to the nation’s 20 to 30 million illegal immigrants.

Whenever a nation cannot withhold itself, it is in a very perilous position. However, it is extremely difficult to believe that the United States of America is a country unable to provide its own goods and services. It is quite obvious on the other hand that the nation has become so accustomed to cheap labor that it feels that the economy cannot do without it. Businesses and farms have been built and budgeted in such a way that cheap labor has been factored into the operating costs. Powerful lobbies have been formed and sent to Washington to prevent the economy from correcting itself and securing that a steady stream of cheap labor is always available. Even in the wake of 911, border security has either been neglected or paid lip service. The United States of America has become a country that prosecutes and imprisons its own border security agents in order to ensure that cheap labor enters the country.

This isn’t about race. This has nothing to do with race but everything to do with the bottom line of business and farms across the country. Farmers and business owners in the United States have never really had to worry about paying workers fair wages and they do not intend to start doing so anytime soon. Never mind that irascible government policies to the south of the border enrich few and force millions of people to flee their families and their country to work menial jobs for next to nothing. Never mind that many of them risk their lives and some die terrible deaths crossing the border. Never mind that when they come here, they are unable to speak the language and are forced to accept pretty much any wage their boss suggests. Many of them are forced to work ridiculously long hours in unsanitary conditions and have no health coverage, medical insurance or retirement plan. They are the 21^st century slaves sacrificed to the gorgon of the US economy.