On the immigration issue, the Bush administration is letting employers off easy. It has seized on the issue to try to win political points but has done little to demonstrate it can be taken seriously.

In the four years after President Bush first took office, the Immigration and Naturalization Service scaled back its enforcement efforts by 95 percent, according to a recent article in the Washington Post. By 2003, the number of employers prosecuted dropped from 182 to four.

The absorption of the agency by the Department of Homeland Security is partly to blame, since that larger agency has focused most of its resources on fighting terrorism.

But pressures from employer lobbies, immigrant rights advocates and members of Congress themselves has led to decreased enforcement.

Now, according to a recent New York Times report, a majority of undocumented immigrants work for mainstream companies, are paid regularly in the form of payroll checks and receive W-2 forms in January like typical American citizens.

An underground market exists so that undocumented workers can receive fake green cards and Social Security numbers, which are kept on file by the employer and used as the basis for their legitimate employment status.

Enforcement is difficult in these cases because the law states that employers must "knowingly" employ an illegal immigrant. But when these employers are in possession of plausible documents, it is difficult to build a case against them.

As the pro-immigrants' rights marches reached their peak in the spring, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the successor to the Immigration and Naturalization Service) staged a well-publicized raid of a Houston-based pallet company, as well as successfully fining Wal-Mart and some of its subcontractors. The administration also plans to accelerate efforts to set up a system to verify the eligibility of workers so that employers could be held accountable.

But these efforts seem to be designed for political gain in an atmosphere when many Americans are scapegoating undocumented workers.

Those who propose to deport or criminalize them are ignoring the pro-business growth climate that made them acceptable over the last several years.

They also fail to recognize that large corporations are profiting off the backs of undocumented immigrants who are working for low wages and no benefits.

America should come to grips with its double standard. It is immoral to criminalize immigrants who have paid a heavy price in the form of hard work under often-unfair labor conditions and practices.

These workers should be allowed to apply for citizenship, have the right to unionize and find their rightful place in a country that has been all-too-willing to make them invisible when it was convenient.

Ed Morales is author of "Living in Spanglish." He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary that is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.