Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The real crime in the so-called “immigration crisis” isn’t the desperate worker trying to feed their family—it’s the employer who knowingly exploits that desperation. For too long, our political and legal systems have scapegoated undocumented workers while turning a blind eye to the corporations and business owners who profit handsomely from their labor. This isn’t just hypocrisy—it’s complicity. Employers who hire undocumented immigrants without providing legal protections, fair wages, or safe working conditions are breaking the law and violating basic human decency. Yet it’s the workers who end up in handcuffs, in cages, or deported. That’s backwards.

Undocumented people don’t risk their lives crossing borders for fun. They do it because they’ve been forced to—by poverty, violence, corrupt governments, and U.S. foreign policy that has destabilized entire regions. Once here, they do the jobs no one else wants for wages no one else will accept. Meanwhile, the employers who cut those checks—often under the table—reap enormous benefits from their silence and vulnerability.

If we’re serious about addressing illegal immigration, we must start by going after the demand side: the employers who hire undocumented labor to undercut wages and avoid accountability. These are not accidental hires. These are calculated business decisions to maximize profit by exploiting human beings. That’s not just bad policy—it’s morally bankrupt.

Charging and convicting exploitative employers—imposing serious financial and criminal penalties—would dry up the incentive to hire undocumented workers under the table. It would protect both immigrants and native-born workers by raising labor standards and enforcing the laws we already have.

So stop criminalizing survival. Start criminalizing exploitation. It’s not the undocumented worker picking strawberries or cleaning hotel rooms who’s undermining the law—it’s the boss signing the paycheck, laughing all the way to the bank.