I’ve had it up to here. Our forefathers founded this country for one reason and one reason alone — to succeed and celebrate our freedom while denying it to absolutely everyone else who doesn’t have the proper certification.

I understand this, so what about all those illegal immigrants? Sigh. You’d think the people were grateful just to be able to work in ungodly conditions and be exploited by American capitalist institutions that had long been abandoned by the standard work force.

The sad thing is, they seem to be.

I’ll be blunt. Illegal immigration is illegal. It’s not just a clever name. It’s a crime, just like jaywalking, underage possession of alcohol, having an erection in public in Illinois, or hunting camels in Arizona.

The downside to any crackdown on this crime, however, is that if we block undocumented workers from taking the lousy jobs that each of us spoiled never-worked-a-day-in-our-lives-outside-the-farm brats would reject on principle, like meat-packing, janitorial work at America’s finest hotels and motels, and involvement in blue-chip jobs like dishwashing or garbage-collecting, the effect will only be more disastrous.

First off, the jobs need to be done by someone. Look at Omaha, which had its garbage-collection schedule totally knocked off when the INS came in and told Deffenbaugh Industries they were taking their employees on a field trip.

Second, odds are, they’d still get the non-service industrial jobs. It’s just that now they’d get them in Mexico, or as Pat Buchanan described it, “overseas to Mexico.”

While you’re puzzling what sea lies between, say, Texas and Mexico, think about this. All the corporations that we know and love in the form of corporate welfare would probably be more than happy to pull up roots and run to Mexico.

General Motors has done it for years, and they didn’t even lose their immigrant labor. They just got tired of silly ideas like “OSHA regulations” or “the United Auto Workers.” Who can blame them? If our union workers had to work half as hard as GM can get the Mexicans to work, there’d be a walkout in a minute. That’s not even a slam on the union — they probably should.

Or even if our corporations stayed around because they just love the U.S., our economy will hit a nice spiral. If we honestly managed to deport all the undocumented individuals working in our nation, we’d be driving the final nails into the coffin of Social Security.

For those of you who don’t frequently experience the real world, I’ll explain it to you. Money gets taken out of workers’ checks for Social Security, and then someday when those people are sufficiently ripe, they can go to the old government waving their Social Security cards and scream “I’m old! Give me my damn money!”

I know, it seems silly, but you and I will be doing this someday. Well, correction. If we can get more illegals to work here, we might be doing it someday. Otherwise, the system will be bankrupted by all our parents suddenly turning really old overnight.

Immigrants are our only real hope for the system, and they’re your perfect, um, citizens. They work, give the government their cut for Social Security, and then never ask for anything back.

If the government even thought about asking one of us to take one for the team like that, we’d probably start a coup.

What’s the solution? Open the borders to anyone?

Hardly even feasible to consider such a thing with the homeland security department checking every Canadian that crosses the border. Close the borders to everyone and build a giant mile-high wall separating us from the rest of the world? Sorry, Pat Buchanan, maybe next election.

There’s one solution to the question of illegal immigration, and it involves each and every graduate of Iowa State heading straight to all those jobs we’ve lost to those fiends.

College of Business, you take the meat-packing plants.

Liberal arts and sciences, well, you’ll find there’s both an art and a science to washing dishes or cleaning out hotel rooms.

Engineers, it’s trash collection time for you.

The rest of you, well, go find something demeaning and low-paying, and while you’re at it, insist that you make less than minimum wage.

Hey, you guys! Come back! You’re letting the immigrants win!

Damn it, immigrants, give us our terrible jobs back! It’s not that we want them, you see, but we don’t like sharing either.

Tim Kearns

is a senior in political science from Bellevue, Neb.