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To the hotels, farmers, and affluent families who hire illegal immigrants, the labor may be cheap but to the taxpayers it can be very expensive.

Moreover, the people who live in affluent suburbs and have "undocumented workers" to mow their lawns, take care of their children or clean their swimming pools are unlikely to have these workers as neighbors. Nor are these immigrants' children likely to be going to local upscale schools.

Even people who have been railing at Wal-Mart for not paying their workers "enough," claiming that the taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart employees' health care and other benefits, never seem to apply the same reasoning to illegal immigrants.

While American citizens are legally entitled to welfare state benefits, Mexicans get those benefits only if they cross the border into the United States. In short, immigrants add to such costs while Wal-Mart's American employees do not, because they can get those benefits whether they work for Wal-Mart or not.

Whatever the decision as to how many and what kind of immigrants should be let into the United States, why should that decision be made by people in Mexico, instead of being made here by Americans?

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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.

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