Business must do its part to support U.S. border control

OPINION:

The U.S. Supreme Court just handed the White House a win on border control by ruling in essence that President Donald Trump and his team can process for deportation the tens of thousands of illegals who were granted temporary parole status by Joe Biden to stay in the country. This, on the heels of the largest deportation operation that led to the arrest of more than 100 illegals in Florida.

It’s all good for America. But now business must do its part to support the law and order and border control efforts of the executive.

For too long, the business world, with the quiet support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republicans who benefit from their business and Chamber supporters, has welcomed with open arms the cheap labor that illegals bring to America. That needs to change. Some in the business sector defend lackadaisical enforcement against illegals working in certain industries by saying American citizens don’t want to perform those jobs — that without the illegals, those sectors, like farming, would suffer and die quick financial deaths. Such stuff and nonsense has led to what’s become a shameful bipartisan open border advocacy.

In other words: It’s not only Democrats who’ve embraced the illegals. Democrats may do so to save their political hides, with the idea that letting in the illegals guarantees them a voting block for years and years to come. But Republicans — Republicans! —too often turn blind eyes to strict controls at the border so as to enrich their business interest pockets.

The end result is the end result.

An open border is an open border, whatever the reason. 

And an open border that allows businesses to hire illegals for cheaper wages than they’d have to pay American citizens sets in motion a cycle of economic disaster for the entire country.

Cheaper labor plus less skilled labor brings subpar results. Take the housing sector. Building a house used to involve skilled and oft-apprenticeship craftsmanship and care. Workers’ wages reflected that skill and craftsmanship. Today’s housing industry, rife with cookie-cutter styled blueprints that are brought to life with assembly-like speed and cheap products, is so infiltrated with illegals, it’s as Urban Wire wrote in February, “Mass Deportations Would Worsen Our Housing Crisis.” This should not be.

“Immigrants made up more than 23 percent of the construction workforce in 2023,” Urban Wire reported. “It’s estimated that about half of them are undocumented immigrants. The Trump administration’s proposed mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would worsen the worker shortage — deepening the housing crisis and undermining the administration’s goals to ‘lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply.’”

The root of the problem is not the gap of construction jobs that would result from mass deportations. The root of the problem is that illegals were allowed into the country and into the work force in the first place — leading to the consequence of the industry becoming reliant on the illegals’ labor.

But knowingly hiring illegals is illegal.

And businesses need to stop turning blind eyes to the hiring of illegals they know full well they are doing.

“ICE and Florida Highway Patrol detained over 100 people in Tallahassee, Florida,” USA Today wrote. The story went on to report, “More than 100 people were detained in one of Florida’s largest single-day immigration raids at a Tallahassee construction site … in what was described as a panicked scene.”

Good.

“Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke temporary legal status of 500,000 immigrants,” NBC News wrote. The story went on to say that the Department of Homeland Security might now “end a Biden-era program that let people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela permission to temporarily live and work in the U.S.”

Great.

Even better.

Goodbye, illegals. Let the law enforcement flow far and wide.

But without the participation of the business world, and without consequences inflicted on violators in the business world, illegals will continue to pour across the border. Maybe not now; maybe not under this current administration. But one day, political winds will shift and Democrats with all their open border love will dominate the offices of government once again.

And if businesses continue to be complicit, then America will be right back where it was under Team Biden. So long as economic opportunities exist for illegals, the illegals will come.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on X @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.