Editor:

A while back, I was on vacation in Cancun, Mexico. They have a Wal-Mart there, just like back home. Only, it's not just like back home. In Mexico, behind every cash register there is someone standing behind it, making change. I know this sounds unnatural, but it is the truth - Mexico is fully staffed.

When I was a child they used to show news footage on TV of shoppers in Russia standing in long lines, waiting to buy loaves of bread. We used to see those pictures, laugh and blame it on their chosen form of government, Communism.

Thanks to the glories of understaffing in our country, is beginning to look more like Russia, all the time. In fact, Mexico is so fully staffed that some folks who live down there, try to move up here and get the jobs behind those empty cash registers and that's where the rub is.

It turns out that not only is it illegal for the folks down there to do that, it is illegal for the folks up here to hire them. What's more, some of the folks up here make a big deal about the folks down there coming up here in the first place, they also make a lot of noise about the fact that they do it is some sort of breach of national security and, no one can be against national security.

That seems to be even more immoral than sneaking up here and going to work.

So, they're saying: "Build a big 700-mile-long fence. That'll keep 'em down there and we'll be safe." I'm here to tell you, they have it wrong! As long as those folks can come up here and get jobs that pay next to nothing and make a great deal more money than they make back home, we're not going to be able to keep them out.

Enforcing the law on them will be futile at best. What happens when we catch them? We deport them and if they are determined, they come back and we deport them again. What is the definition of insanity? See above.

Painful though it may be, the answer is we enforce the existing laws in this country that apply to our own citizens and companies that illegally hire illegal folks from other countries.

So, let's get off the fence and start addressing the problem instead of the symptom. While we're at it, it wouldn't hurt to increase the number of these folks who can legally come up here and get jobs. There are a lot of unattended cash registers at Wal-Mart.

STEVE MONTELEONE, Casper