The shares of home-building companies have been one of Wall Street’s disaster areas this year, and appear to have accurately predicted the end of the great housing construction binge of the past decade.

Considering this situation has caused Maria Fotopoulos of Californians for Population Stabilization to develop a sophisticated new analysis of the dangers of the Senate’s Kennedy-Bush Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration Bill.

She points out that the huge bloating of the construction industry, driven by cheap money and dubious lending practices, drew in disproportionate numbers of illegals into its work force

With housing being the biggest jobs driver in the post-dot.com boom, it’s not surprising that 20 percent of the 7.2 million illegal work force is laboring in construction, including jobs as brick masons; carpet, floor and tile installers; drywall and ceiling tile installers; painters; and other related building jobs.
In some specific construction trades, illegal workers account for large percentages of the work force. For instance, according to [the Pew Hispanic Center], 36 percent of all insulation workers are estimated to be illegal, as are 29 percent of roofers and 28 percent of drywall and ceiling tile installers

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(Housing Debt drives immigration - Clarionledger.com August 7 2006)

If the party in housing really is over, many of these newcomers face unemployment:

There’s potential to see an unprecedented and ugly bust that would result in large job losses. A bust most certainly would impact the employment status of the estimated 1 million illegals working in construction in the country.
These are some of the very illegal workers that government officials would like to offer a path to citizenship–if the boom busts, there will be a large illegal work force unemployed and, by extension for those with spouses and children here, more illegal dependents without a primary provider…Under proposed Senate legislation, large numbers of these unemployed workers could become citizens, further burdening the country

The prudent thing, of course, would be to delay any immigration relaxation until the economy normalized. But whoever accused immigration enthusiasts like Ted Kennedy of prudence?

According to a story by Marla Dickerson in the LA Times, there is a potential crisis brewing in Mexico due to the impending collapse of their major oil field:

“Cantarell is going to fall a lot, and quickly,” said independent consultant Guillermo Cruz Dominguez Vargas, a former executive with Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex. “I can’t imagine the strain on this society if there is nothing to replace it.”

What does this have to do with immigration? If this happens, there is every reason to expect immigration pressure from Mexico to greatly accelerate. Americans need a thoughtful debate on how to address this issue-something that goes beyond the nonsense of the McCain/Kennedy/Bush abusurdity.

Howdy Ya’ll…

I will be chatting with the irrepressible but always edifying Chuck Baker out there in Colorado this Wednesday (August 9th) at 1:00 mountain time…unless of course the capricious event known as childbirth gets in the way!

You can listen live here.

The Chuck Baker Show broadcasts daily at 1:00 on KKKK AM 1580 in Denver, Colorado.

(Before anybody decides to get cute and send me nasty email about the call letters, I DIDN’T PICK THEM…and NO, the radio station is NOT racist…not that an inanimate object is capable of channeling hate but there you go!)