>>The businesses may not like that, but I'd surely like to see them normally salaried and normally taxed.
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>I agree with you on this one. The real cause of this issue is good ole' American greed. If you start busting the businesses that are taking advantage of these people with hefty fines and stuff, then they wouldn't be hiring these people to begin with. So if there is no work, then I suspect there would be a smaller number of illegals here.

And now we are getting to the heart of the issue. The current outfit (Bush & Co.) had 5+ years to deal with this. In fact his first international visit was from the president of Mexico and they made a nice speech saying how they will deal with the immigration frommexico issue. the 9/11 happenned and Dubya forgot all about it.

Now that they are very low in the polls and that Iraq and other issues (Plamegate, deficit, corruption) are hot, they push Congress to do something and therefore put this in the fore-front of the news. But the thing is backfiring.

What the right-wingers Congress and the White House are pushing for is criminalizing these illegals, deporting them and building a wall.
So far they have enjoyed cheap labor (some would say slave-labor) which works for corporation's profit margins.

They now realize that if they make these people legal (after processing, fees, penalties and whatever), they will all start asking for health insurance, better pay, benefits, pensions and many of them unionizing and also many of them getting to vote in the future. The right-wingers are scared of this.