Cramping down on “illegal immigration” is costing U.S. taxpayers, including “6 million unauthorized immigrants” who file taxes every year according to IRS estimates, 5 billion dollars.

The persecution and punishment efforts certainly constitute an extremely profitable business for corporations such as KBR, the ex Halliburton affiliate that feeds expensive hamburgers to U.S. soldiers in Iraq, also endowed with $385 million dollars to build immigration centers in 2006, “in the event of an emergency” as stated in the company’s 2006 annual report. An eventuality already staged to house “illegal” aliens by the thousands. The same contractor would earn another $1 billion dollars to run those centers, as part of the government’s outsourcing of its defense and law enforcement duties.

In 2006, the Army National Guard was awarded another 2 billion dollars to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing on the border, along with millions more to benefit Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing to provide surveillance technology, not restricted to border traffic, but to the monitoring of released aliens with sophisticated “bracelets” previous to deportation.

This generous distribution of taxpayers’ money modestly involves also cash-strapped state law enforcement agencies awarded with 400 million dollars by the Department of Justice in 2007, to participate in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, SCAPP. To qualify state agencies must shoulder two thirds of the total cost of persecuting “criminal aliens”, anyone illegally entering the country or overstaying their visa, bringing that cost to $1.2 billion dollars.

The one specific effect of chasing immigrants is ensuring alien labor remains cheap for the farming, construction and service industries. Once the economy stagnates those jobs, especially construction due to the housing debacle, are expediently shed.

While rebuilding New Orleans undocumented Latinos, half of the whole cleanup workforce, would earn 65% less than “legal” workers, subjected to unsanitary and hazardous conditions forced to work without the required protective gear, making the cost of that labor even less expensive. Once the main cleaning operation was over, authorities revisited the menace of alien labor and promised to persecute those cheap and disposable workers.

America to our own chagrin is addicted not only to cheap fuel, as President Bush correctly ascertained, but it is also addicted to cheap recreational drugs, which explains why after spending another $5 billion dollars in Colombia to combat drug production and traffic, cocaine production increased.

Another shameful addiction of ours is to cheap labor, $5 billion dollars have been spent already, in part to ally the fears of terror from abroad, but mostly to quench the thirst of connected government contractors, and more importantly to fuel the growth of an economy based on hypocritical greed.