Liberal economist Paul Krugman didn’t make much news with his pronouncement on Saturday that our current downturn is really a Depression. Presumably the Opravda media didn’t think the remark met pre-election guidelines.

Paul Krugman: Economy under Obama in a Depression, Washington Examiner Campaign 2012, June 11, 2012

Economist Paul Krugman had bad news for liberals Netroots Nation on Saturday. During his keynote speech the New York Times columnist admitted that the United States economy was suffering a depression.

“We don’t have a formal definition, I’d say that a Depression is when things are down, when things are terrible for an extended period of time,” Krugman said, reminding them that were even “official” periods of recovery during the Great Depression.

“So it is again today,” he said.

“It’s not as bad as the Great Depression – there’s a winning slogan,” he added cynically. [. . .]

(Although the MSM rolled out some nasty statistics on Tuesday: Americans saw wealth plummet 40 percent from 2007 to 2010, Federal Reserve says, Washington Post.)

With so much accumulating misery in the land, one might think the low-hanging fruit could be pruned — namely common-sense remedies to legal and illegal immigration that would reduce the overall number of workers. One hurtful policy has been Washington allowing legal immigration to continue the addition of a million workers annually to compete against citizens.

An estimated 23 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and millions more have simply quit looking for work.

When the economy was booming, businesses asked for and got increased numbers of employment visas. But now, in a Krugman-designated depression, there is no Off switch for immigration.

Also, Pew Hispanic counted over eight million illegal aliens illegally occupying American jobs, but we see no legislation from the Republican-run House for universal workplace enforcement to remove illegals already employed. Experience on the state level demonstrates that workplace enforcement liberates jobs for citizens.

It’s unfortunate that the debate about immigration enforcement has focused almost entirely on the border, when so much pain is caused by the government’s refusal to deal with worksite illegality. Millions of jobs could easily be made available for lawful workers with a simple check of workers’ Social Security numbers, but no politician wants to eject millions of foreigners and face the fury of the hostile tribes that benefit from immigration anarchy.

Furthermore, the border is not a complete metric for measuring whether Washington has brought immigration chaos under control. Millions enter legally on tourist or student visas, but never leave and thereby become illegal when they no longer fulfill their visa requirements. Therefore a secure border alone does not guarantee a legal immigration system that serves American needs and supports US sovereignty.

The nation absolutely needs border control for national security and to keep out Mexican organized crime. But the job theft problem can be more effectively handled by workplace enforcement using onsite identification checks.

Both political parties are failing the American worker, as shown by their refusal to rescue millions of stolen jobs for citizens during a time of enormous economic suffering.