The analogy is misleading in the following way:
Hiring illegal immigrants harms low-skilled domestic workers and taxpayers. Prostitution is essentially a victimless crime.
Hiring illegal immigrants harms low-skilled domestic workers and taxpayers. Prostitution is essentially a victimless crime.
I always found them courteous and well mannered. But there was this hardness in them that I could only attribute to the business they were involved in. Almost a kind of lifelessness in them. It is not a victimless crime, it is full of victims - a profound disruption of humanity.
Prostitution has had various levels of acceptability in many societies over the millenia. In some it was a highly regarded position, in others completely unacceptable and everything in between in others.
There are those who choose it as a way of life, there are many others who are forced into it. When we are unwillingly or unable to help these as a society then we, as a society, are failing these vulnerable people as we fail all those who are vulnerable.
Where did taxpayers come into it?
People (women or otherwise) who are trading sex for goods and services in the market are prostitutes.
Not to mention that there are acceptable places to do (small counties in Nevada) and unacceptable places to do so (everywhere else in the US). I won't even get into the number of countries that have either legalized or decriminalized this practice.
Finally, the best way to find sex trafficking victims seems to be decriminalization which removes the stigma of speaking out. What's really broken here is that the foot soldiers of sex trafficking seem to be against all this pending legislation, fearing it will drive the practice further underground, rather than assist with battling it.
Honest trade reduces opportunity for dishonest exploitation? Sure, I'll agree that's the case, but...
That's pretty much all women; what defines a prostitute is the transparent price schedule and lack of exclusivity.
Taxpayers might be harmed, but I suspect they'd be harmed much more severely by food prices skyrocketing because farms don't have sufficient labor to keep up with the demand from a growing national population (let alone global; California is the leading - and in some cases the only significant - exporter of a staggeringly-large number of fruits and vegetables).
Meanwhile, cracking down on illegal immigrants' ability to work and live in the US gives employers of said immigrants more leverage ("work these long hours for chump change or we'll report you and your whole family to the authorities"). Amnesty programs and other means to convert illegal immigrants into legal immigrants shifts at least some leverage back to the illegal worker, which then allows better negotiating power for higher wages and thus addresses the supposed problem that illegal workers are undercutting legal workers.
These jobs used to pay a man enough to support a family. Where has the money gone? What happens if an illegal gets hurt? Do they get workmen's compensation? I'm sure they get a small settlement, the cut fixed, and sent home. All the people are complicit. It is all about growth and more profit. You can have a sustainable business and employees that get decent pay with benefits.
$20/hour is enough to do exactly that in most places that don't start with "San" and end with "Francisco". I know full well that not every illegal-immigrant-hiring industry pays that well, but it's my understanding that agriculture does, and that's one industry that seems to be disproportionately affected by the lack of undocumented workers.
> What happens if an illegal gets hurt? Do they get workmen's compensation?
In California at least, as far as workmen's compensation is concerned, illegal immigrants qualify as "employees"[1], so if a legal immigrant (or natural citizen) is entitled to it, then so is an illegal immigrant.
Of course, this varies from state to state.