FACT CHECK ME: THE SYSTEM THAT WON’T BREAK

None of this is hidden.

None of it is secret.

None of it requires insider knowledge.

We know how slavery funded resistance.

We know how exploitation sustains power.

We know how border crackdowns backfired.

We know how undocumented labor props up entire economies.

We know why people stopped leaving once leaving became dangerous.

We know the system is irrational, immoral, and inefficient.

So why is it still a problem?

Because this isn’t a failure of knowledge.

It’s a success of design.

The modern American economy does not run on ignorance.

It runs on contradiction.

We say we believe in the rule of law,

while maintaining an illegal labor force.

We say we oppose exploitation,

while structuring entire industries around fear.

We say the border is “out of control,”

while quietly relying on the chaos it produces.

This is not dysfunction.

This is equilibrium.

For decades, migration between countries functioned as circulation.

People came to work.

They sent money home.

They went back.

They repeated the cycle.

Then we militarized the border.

We assumed making entry harder would stop movement.

Instead, it trapped people inside.

If crossing becomes expensive, violent, and lethal,

you don’t risk it twice.

You stay.

Crackdowns didn’t reduce migration.

They reduced return.

That single policy shift transformed a temporary workforce

into a permanent, undocumented underclass.

Not because people wanted to stay —

but because leaving became too dangerous.

And still, the jobs remained.

The farms needed hands.

The buildings needed bodies.

The hotels needed cleaners.

The food needed harvesting.

So the system adapted.

It outsourced risk downward.

It criminalized mobility instead of exploitation.

It punished workers instead of employers.

It kept enforcement loud at the border

and quiet in the fields.

Fear became the new discipline.

Not chains.

Not ownership.

Fear.

And fear works just as well.

Undocumented workers can’t organize.

They can’t report abuse.

They can’t strike.

They can’t vote.

They can’t safely say no.

That vulnerability is not accidental.

It is the economic feature.

This is why the problem persists even though everyone understands it.

Fixing it would require honesty.

Honesty that we want the labor.

Honesty that we don’t want to pay its real cost.

Honesty that “illegal immigration” is less threatening to the economy

than legal labor with rights.

And honesty is expensive.

Ending exploitation would raise prices.

Food would cost more.

Construction would slow.

Services would shrink.

Margins would tighten.

Those costs would be immediate and visible.

The benefits —

dignity, legality, stability, cohesion —

would be delayed and diffuse.

Democracies are terrible at choosing that tradeoff.

So instead, we perform outrage.

We argue borders.

We argue morality.

We argue numbers.

We argue identity.

Anything but the structure.

Because the structure reveals the truth:

You cannot have an illegal workforce in a lawful economy.

As long as labor demand remains,

and rights remain denied,

the system will not break on its own.

It will not end because it’s wrong.

It will not end because it’s cruel.

It will not end because it’s obvious.

Systems like this only break when exploitation becomes

more expensive than justice.

That happens when labor disappears.

When shortages can’t be hidden.

When enforcement moves upward instead of downward.

When employers face prison instead of fines.

When visibility replaces denial.

When chaos reaches consumers directly.

Historically, it takes shock.

War.

Economic collapse.

Demographic failure.

Climate displacement.

No system built on domination has ever dissolved politely.

This one won’t either.

The question isn’t whether we know what’s happening.

The question is how much breaking we’re willing to endure

before we admit what kind of economy we’ve been running all along.