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John Dyce

Published: February 24, 2009

The administration has a golden opportunity to make a dent in the illegal immigration problem. That's because huge numbers of illegals here for jobs and not the "American Dream" have returned to their home countries due to lack of work.
Their homelands are now hurting and may be forced to finally start taking care of their excess populations by improving infrastructure and job opportunities rather than having another generation of children dreaming of going to El Norte in order to support their desperately poor families.
What the U.S. should do is step up enforcement so that those workers cannot sneak back in. Both law and order Republicans and bleeding heart Democrats would be comfortable with that; it's a win, win situation.
Locally, the exodus of illegal workers and their families has had a negative economic impact on school budgets, retail and hospitals, exposing, perhaps, reasons that we are not tougher on not employing them. But we can adjust.
In this economic environment, traditional employers of skilled illegals, such as construction and roofing companies, will likely find willing legal replacement employees.
And, if no local wants to pick citrus, perhaps the diminished number of illegals will spur the citrus industry to support an effective guest worker program.
Finally, the jobs' equation has two sides: the number of jobs compared to the number of willing workers. The fastest way to recovery is to reduce the number of workers. That is already happening.
John Dyce
Lorida

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