When jobs are illegal, only illegals will have jobs.

• Author: Morse, Jennifer Roback

My headline may exaggerate a bit but not much. The controversy over President Bush's immigration plan overlooks the fact that some of our illegal immigration problem arises from government regulations mandating unsustainable wages and benefits.

It sounds good to require employers to pay a "living wage" and provide health, parental leave, and many other benefits. But some workers are not economically productive enough to make those high-minded requirements cost-effective for the employer. Mandated benefits make the young, the low-skilled, and the poorly educated legally unemployable. Their jobs have been made illegal.

Since it is easier to recognize a problem when someone else is guilty, let's look at Europe. Most European countries have generous social safety nets partially provided by employers. Benefits such as six weeks of paid vacation, short workweeks, health care, and maternal leave all increase the costs of employing workers.

The result is that some people have fabulous jobs, and others have nothing. Workers whose productivity does not justify these compensation levels are out of luck. Unemployment in European countries has stabilized at 8 percent--a scandal by American standards. European youth (too young to have acquired skills commensurate with these compensation levels) spend years in universities, in socially enforced idleness, waiting to be allowed to do something genuinely useful.

In the meantime, there are still jobs for which no one is willing to pay the legally required compensation package. All over Europe, immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East do those jobs. These Muslim immigrants, barred from the higher-class jobs, are angry about their exclusion.

Of course, no one admits to planning this outcome. But that outcome is the inevitable consequence of years of legislation. European progressives have done a fine job of voting for bigger compensation packages. They break their arms...