Amid our increasingly rancorous debate over immigration, we can find some small respite in the fact that, for the most part, we have ceased quibbling among ourselves about whether to refer to migrants not authorized to be here as “undocumented” or “illegal.” Clearly, we have become preoccupied with more pressing aspects of our broken immigration regime. Yet as the voices get louder and the stakes higher, little gets said about, and no specific terms have emerged to depict, those millions among us — whether large employers, small-business owners, or householders — who flout our laws and continue to routinely hire undocumented workers.
Although we readily assign responsibility to illegal immigrants themselves — as we should — for their presence here, we tend to avoid blaming those who by employing them encourage and facilitate their presence among us. To be sure, there are the occasional enforcement actions against large employers, as well as journalistic exposés of those who underpay, cheat, mistreat, or otherwise exploit illegal immigrants. Yet in the broader public debate, there is almost no criticism of those who hire them. The employers, large or small, are not regarded as scofflaws or deemed bad citizens. Yet they are the magnets that have for years drawn these migrants here like iron filings.
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