Yesterday the Democrats released the outline for immigration reform, but there is something missing. The issue, which goes to the heart of the matter, is the hiring of illegal immigrants. Under current laws the fines for businesses that hire illegals is laughable. It’s such a small amount that the fines actually becoming nothing more than the “cost of doing business”.

Let me go back to an example I have cited here before. A Krispy Kreme factory here in southwest Ohio was busted for hiring illegals back in 2006. At the time they found 25 undocumented workers employed by the diabetes factory. In 2009 they finally settled for $40,000. If we now do some simple math we can quickly see how this was a really good deal for Krispy Kreme.

• 2080 – Average number of hours worked per year per employee
• 52,000 – The number of hours for 25 full time employees in a year.

Even if Krispy Kreme decided to pay this people $1.00 less per hour since they are illegal, they still came out $12,000 ahead in just one year. Who wouldn’t turn down an extra $12,000 a year? Not to mention that this also takes away from jobs for citizens in an area with extra-high unemployment, and even drives down the wages for those “legal” workers.

When immigration reform came up a couple of years ago the Democrats did try to increase the penalties to companies hiring illegals. That was quickly defeated by the Republicans, who decried the move as “unfair” to business. Instead they chose to keep everything at the status quo and businesses continue to do the practice to this very day.

It’s time for our government to take serious steps against businesses that actually break the law. Immigration is only one example of this, but it can also be applied to employee safety and environmental issues. Companies shouldn’t have any reason to complain about this, so long as they chose to follow the law. That’s something every citizen of this country has to decide to do, but the repercussions for not doing so are much heavier for an individual than they are for a company. Democrats need to work to reverse that.