If anyone needs evidence that our immigration system is terribly and totally broken, they need only look at what happened in Laurel and Ellisville on Monday, when U.S. agents raided Howard Industries and detained 595 suspected illegal workers.

Spokesmen with Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the investigation had taken place over several years, and had resulted from a union tip. Workers at the plant later said it was an open secret that Howard was employing illegal workers, and that they were not surprised at the raid.

Howard, a major industrial company in the Pine Belt and one with considerable political clout, denied that it had knowingly hired illegal workers. It had virtually nothing to say to the public, but released a statement saying that it used accepted methods to verify workers’ status, including the E-Verify system and fingerprinting.

Illegal immigration has provided the perfect red-meat bait for politicians responding to calls across the country for tougher enforcement of the nation’s borders. In the years since the devastating 9/11 attacks on this country, that drumbeat has only gotten louder. (Several of the terrorists had expired visas.)

The bumper sticker phrases are predictable:

“Illegal means illegal.”

“What part of ’illegal’ don’t you understand?”

“Shamnesty.”

Cooler heads need to prevail.

The system must be reformed. Part of that does include better enforcement, but shipping 12 million immigrants back to their original country is both impossible and refuses to acknowledge that these workers are needed in the United States.

The vast majority of illegal immigrants come here for one reason: To carve out a better life for themselves and their family in a nation that still brands itself as a land of opportunity.

They are illegal because the process for becoming a citizen is arduous and can take years, and they are illegal because Congress issues far too few work visas for employers who need the workers. They are illegal because our system is broken.

The Rockridge Institute asked, “What role have international trade agreements had in creating or exacerbating people’s urge to flee their homelands? If capital is going to freely cross borders, should people and labor be able to do so as well, going where globalization takes the jobs?”

It’s a legitimate question that deserves an answer.

This country will elect a new president in November. We hope that either Barack Obama or John McCain help lead a discussion that will seriously examine the current system and work with all interested parties to figure out what would be a better and more fair approach.