The events surrounding Jim Oberweis last week amply illustrated the great hypocrisy of many anti-illegal immigrant pundits.

Oberweis, a well-to-do Illinois dairy farm owner, is running for governor. When he campaigned for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2005, a large part of his campaign was his tough stance on illegal immigrants.

One television ad showed Oberweis flying over Chicago’s Soldier Field. He said so many illegal immigrants entered the U.S. each week their number could fill the stadium.

“Illegal aliens are coming here to take American workers’ jobs, drive down wages and take advantage of government benefits such as free health care, and you pay,” Oberweis said in one ad.

Oberweis is a bit wrong about a few things. First, they’re isn’t a stadium-filling weekly increase in immigrants, according to the Nov. 9 Chicago Tribune editorial.

He also doesn’t need to fly to Chicago to find illegal immigrants, according to the Tribune. Actually, he needs only to walk into one of his ice cream shops.

Rosa Ramirez and Jorge Ibarra, illegal immigrants from Mexico, were paid the equivalent of $3.25 by a subcontractor of Oberweis to clean the shop.

“There’s not much question that Ramirez and Ibarra worked in an Oberweis store. The coalition showed a DVD recording of them wiping a glass door affixed with the Oberweis logo and mopping floors near an ice cream freezer,” the Tribune continued.

After recovering from a fit of laughter, I began thinking seriously about the issue of illegal immigration.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau quoted by a Feb. 1, 2003 CNN article, there were 7 million illegal immigrants in the United States, of which about 70 percent were Mexicans like Ramirez and Ibarra.

I’m sure many people, particularly that Minuteman group we’ve been hearing so much about, don’t want millions of illegal immigrants here.

But in the end, there’s an irresistible, if unconscionable, economic, mathematic set of principles to illegal immigration.

On the Mexican immigrants side, it’s multiplication: according to the CIA World Factbook, the average U.S. citizen makes more than four times per capita than the average Mexican citizen.

It’s a different type of math for one wealthy American.

For the sake of argument, let’s call him Mr. O. For him, it’s division. He (or his subcontractor) divides his cleaning expenses by only paying Ramirez or Ibarra half of minimum wage.

As long as America’s economically advantaged can use that kind of math, we’re not going to get rid of illegal immigration.

The CNN article further reported the largest population of illegal immigrants is in California, with large increases in Arizona.

Hmm … didn’t some other country originally own those two states? Some Spanish-speaking North American country? I know … it was Mexico!

So, to sum up, millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico often risk their lives to enter lands that were once owned by Mexico, to work for wealthy Americans who decry them for political capital but exploit them for economic capital, which becomes political capital via a campaign war chest.

I think the only way we’d solve the illegal immigration issue would be to have potential immigrants’ homelands become economically viable.

Many folks would say that’s an idealistic pipe dream. Maybe.

But you could say that about stopping illegal immigration … or having our potential public leaders stop saying one thing and doing another.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.