Today, the New York Times has a fascinating story by Sarah Maslin Nir about illegal employment practices at New York’s nail salons. In the U.S. as a whole, nail salons have become more popular since 2000, but they have exploded in the Big Apple. A Times graphic reveals that there are about ten times as many nail salons as Starbucks coffee shops in one Upper East Side neighborhood. And those Starbucks employees likely earn more than the nail-salon workers. Nir’s story catalogues various difficulties workers face: having to pay to get a job at a nail salon, not being paid for months, being paid well below the minimum wage (many workers make much less than $40 a day, despite working full days), having to live packed in tiny apartments, being subject to wage garnishment by employers for tiny mistakes, being denied overtime pay, and so forth. Many of the scenes described by Nir would easily fit into the muckraking journalism of the early 20th century.

Since many of the workers profiled are illegal immigrants, immigration is a key subtext of this Times story. The Obama administration has bowed to many activists and lobbyists in refusing to enforce immigration law rigorously (a position that Hillary Clinton has now seemingly embraced as well), and this is one of the consequences of that decision. The creation of a legal vacuum, where laws on the books remain studiously ignored, has been one of the most civically damaging aspects of the current encouragement of illegal immigration. This vacuum allows the strong to exploit the weak, creates a safe haven for various criminal enterprises, and instills a sense of cynicism about the rule of law. The refusal of many New York government agencies to enforce employment law at nail salons mirrors the federal government’s decision not to monitor the employment of illegal immigrants.

While a native-born worker or legal immigrant could more easily complain to the legal authorities about employment law being violated, these illegal workers have far fewer options. Moreover, since these nail-salon owners feel as though they can get cheaper and more compliant workers in illegal immigrants, they have much less incentive to hire legal workers. Thus, legal workers are driven out of an employment field and illegal immigrants face pervasive abuses at the workplace. That cheap mani-pedi has a high civic price.

Without the institution of a real enforcement regime, granting instant legalization to illegal immigrants is likely to worsen this dynamic by providing even more incentive for illegal immigration and strengthening the underground networks of exploitation that rely upon illegal immigrants. We could even see situations where the newly legalized are forced out of their positions by new illegal immigrants, who are willing to accept even lower wages and worse working conditions. Instant legalization is no substitute for eliminating the legal vacuum.

In an Orwellian inversion of language, the far Left and its enablers in the elite media smear as “anti-immigrant” those who call for the enforcement of immigration law. Are the kinds of abuses listed in this Times story pro-immigrant? Whether one agrees with minimum-wage law and other government regulations or not, the law is the law, and allowing some people to break the law with impunity can have damaging consequences for the civic compact. By rigorously enforcing the law and eliminating the legal vacuum of bad-faith open borders, we can strengthen the hand of the average worker and help create economic opportunity for both immigrants and the native born.