There has been much discussion concerning the role of American businesses in the flow of illegals into the country. While almost everyone agrees that the illegals would not come to the country if jobs were not available, there is no agreement on how much culpablity the businesses have in hiring illegals. A recent article explains that many Mexicans have jobs before crossing states that at least in some situations, prospective employers actively solicit illegals as future employees.

A growing number of U.S. employers and migrants are tapping into an underground employment network that matches one with the other, often before the migrants leave home.

"It continues to become clear who controls immigration: It's not governments, but rather the market," said Jorge Santibanez, director of the Tijuana-based think-tank Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

As debate over immigration heats up in the United States, more and more U.S. companies in need of cheap labor are turning to undocumented employees to recruit friends and relatives back home, and to smugglers to find job seekers.

To say that the recruitment of illegals is profitable is an understatement.

The few cases that are prosecuted, however, highlight how lucrative a business recruiting undocumented workers has become. In one case, a single smuggler allegedly earned $900,000 over 15 months placing 6,000 migrants in jobs at Chinese restaurants across the upper Midwest.

Shan Wei Yu, a 51-year-old Chinese-American, was sentenced in December to nine years in federal prison on charges involving the transportation of 40 of those migrants. Investigations involving the others continue.

Rick Hilzendager, special agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Grand Forks, N.D., said Yu connected 6,000 migrants from Latin America with jobs in Chinese restaurants in Illinois, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

It would seem apparent that the companies hiring illegals will have to be prosecuted in order to stem the tide of illegal workers.

To make a real dent in this network, the U.S. government would need to go after employers or make them pay the costs of legalizing workers, migration activists say.

But an August 2005 report of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, indicates the opposite is happening. After the Sept. 11 attacks, work-site inspections by U.S. immigration officials plummeted as they focused on national security cases.

From 1999 to 2004, the number of businesses that faced fines dropped from 417 to three, the GAO said. Data after 2004 could not be compared because the government changed the way it records data.

Investigators say fake documents makes it difficult to prove an employer has knowingly hired an undocumented worker. The business community argues that employers aren't equipped to spot fraud and warns that more investigations could lead to workplace discrimination.

So all of this appears to be a catch-22 type situation. There is a government supplied internet data base that can be used to verify documentation such as social security numbers but businesses seem reluctant to use it.