The reason why we have a problem with illegal immigrants is because the government is too beholden to corporate interests. This is one of the two ways that corporations get around America's relatively progressive labor laws, the other being to move operations overseas.

Mrs. M. is right about the "asshole, law breaking employers," but the government is complicit here, too. The illegal immigrants are here because work needs doing and they need jobs. The straightforward way to put one and two together would be to increase the quotas for legal immigration of workers in agriculture and wherever else illegals are employed, but if that were done, then the employers would have to meet legal labor standards, and they don't want to have to.

Hence the current system, in which the government looks the other way, while employers can get away with just about anything because illegals don't dare report them for fear of being deported.