Life Without Cheap Labor

One of the more ingenious political moves of the recent past was Dubya's revealing this week of his plan to deal with the staggering number of "undocumented workers" - illegal aliens, in other words - in the US. Kudos to Karl Rove, et. al. for figuring out how to, in the same intitiative, reach out the an increasingly powerful minority group (Hispanics) and the GOP buisness base (the US Chamber of Commerce is on board).

A fascinating column in today's New York Times takes a good look at the entire situation. The bottom line is that if, somehow, we could rid ourselves of all illegals right now in some sort of O'Reily / Buchannon wet dream, our economy would damn near collapse. Well, we'd pay more for lettuce, at least, which doesn't honk me off very much, to be honest. While I think Dubya's plan is more about politics than practical benefits for the country, at least it deals with the issue in some way.