Lou Dobbs - Horse-Loving Hypocrite?

Lou Dobbs is a strong opponent of illegal immigration. In his campaign to cease the flow of illegals in this country, one of Dobbs' main tactacts has been to support laws punishing businesses that hire illegals (with severe fines and often imprisonment). As he tells it, hiring illegals should be made a felony.

Yet is Lou Dobbs himself funneling money to businesses that hire illegals? Anyone familiar with Dobbs' ties to the equestrian business would have to admit the possibility as at least possible. Let me explain. Dobbs has two daughters who are both accomplished horseback riders, competing at the highest levels in equestrian and show jumping competitions (in 2006, my sister was selected along with both of the Dobbs girls to join the U.S. Young Riders team, a collection of the top U.S. riders under 18). The Dobbs famiy owns multiple horses at their estate in New Jersey.

Anyone vaguely familiar with the horse world can tell you that it is rife with illegal immigrants. Of the hundreds of predominantly Mexican and Latin American workers who serve as grooms in high-priced barns, relatively few have Green cards. As a child tagging along at horse shows in Lake Placid, NY and Wellington, FL, I have found memories of visits by INS officials sending grooms scattering and shutting down competition for entire days. Excluding certain types of agricultural work, I would bet that the equestrian business has a higher percentage of illegals than just about any industry in America.

Lou Dobbs obviously pays for his daughters barn fees. Might the barns at which the Dobbs daughters ride employ illegal immigrants as grooms? Though I have no way of answering this question, some enterprising investigator would do well to check it out. I'm tempted to fly down to Palm Beach this winter and poke around the Dobbs daughters barn myself. Maybe befriend an INS agent tired of being ridiculed by Lou Dobbs as incompetent and enlist him in the cause.

My interest in this story is not simply a matter of playing Gotchca!, and certainly not in embarassing the children of a public figure. Lou Dobbs' payments to the equestrian business fascinates me because horse barns are such perfect examples of how illegal immigrants contribute to this country. Being a groom is a very physically demanding job at low wages; if we were to deport all illegal immigrants tomorrow, I doubt that many native Americans would be lining up to muck stalls or braid horse manes for minimum wage. At the very least, deporting all illegal immigrants would create considerable excess demand for grooms in this country.

So barn owners who employ illegal immigrants strike me as doing basically nothing wrong - they are providing jobs to very poor people, jobs that most native Americans would not want. Yet Lou Dobbs is intent on vilifying all business owners who employ illegals as anti-American criminals. If one could show that Dobbs himself is supporting the employment of illegals.... maybe this revelation could add some nuance to the immigration debate! Any immigration officials reading this?