WAURIKA — If we’re serious about stemming the flow of illegal immigrants into the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, then it’s time to turn the binoculars around. Rather than fixate on “illegals” crossing our southern border, turn the focus to the north.

To wit: The other evening, I was watching Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN. I like Dobbs’ independent mind and libertarian bent, although his program too often becomes the “All Immigration, All the Time Hour.”

Anyway, one of Dobbs’ surrogates was doing a follow-up interview with the sheriff of a small border town in Texas. Two years before, the sheriff had faced a conundrum about jail overcrowding. And as it turned out, he still was battling the problem.

The volume of illegal immigrants being captured and stored in the town hoosegow was so overwhelming that other prisoners, including some arrested for violent crimes, were being released before their sentences were served.

The sheriff had some sympathy with the “illegals” he was nabbing. He characterized most as “good people,” who crossed the Rio Grande to work at vegetable farms on the U.S. side. Although the sheriff felt compelled to crackdown on “illegals,” in doing so, it created an even more serious situation.

However, while listening to the lawman, I didn’t hear anything about the number of local employers and landowners who were being tossed in the slammer.

Which brings us to the crux of the immigration malaise: The root cause of the highly-hyped illegal immigration situation stems from the overwhelming availability of illegal employment in the USofA. It’s really simple: If there were no jobs available for undocumented workers, a huge percentage would never enter this country, and illegal immigration would be a molehill instead of a mountain.

While groups like the Minuteman Militia get in a lather about undocumented workers thumbing their noses at the rule of law, some U.S. employers are blowing their noses on laws that regulate employment.

The undocumented worker/unscrupulous employer charade has a long history in this country. Farmers and landowners, landscapers, construction companies, the garment industry and others have been taking advantage of undocumented workers for generations.

Historically, when immigration issues arise, the focus of our response is on the illegal immigrant. But more than any other factor (including freedom), illegal employers are responsible for the dramatic rise in illegal immigrants.

In the same breath, illegal employers are also a key factor in the decline of wages and benefits American workers have experienced.

Obviously, there are economic incentives in being an illegal employer. Avoiding minimum wage laws, health care costs, workers compensation, collective bargaining and other benefits American workers have come to expect means MORE PROFIT.

Of course, the “illegals” see no benefit from that profit. All an illegal employer has to do is dangle the threat of deportation in front of someone without a green card, and that poor schmo will work longer hours and do harder work for less pay — and keep his mouth shut about it.

By hiring illegal immigrants and being unaccountable for breaking the law, illegal employers create an incentive for otherwise law-abiding foreign nationals to become criminals on this side of the border. Illegal employers also encourage undocumented workers to put themselves in life-threatening situations to get into this country.

And what about the free market aspect? We rail about China and India skewing the free market, but where’s the outrage over the unlevel playing field created by U.S. employers who hire undocumented workers?

A market economy in which some employers follow the law and others don’t is neither fair nor free.

All things considered, it would seem the cornerstone of illegal immigration reform should be on cracking down on illegal employers.

We can scream ad nauseum about building fences, expanding detection technology, sending in the National Guard and hiring thousands of new INS officers. We can experiment with “guest worker plans,” expedite the legal immigration process and try a dozen other methods in a furious attempt to get a grip on illegal immigration.

But until we toughen and enforce laws dealing with illegal employers, all we’re doing is trying to put out a wildfire with a squirt gun.