It’s strange, this debate over illegal immigration. To our credit, we sympathize at a personal level with people who make their way into the United States from Mexico to support their families. Last week, when the meat-packing plant in Marshalltown was raided by the Department of Homeland Security, some of us even seemed willing to shrug off reports that illegal workers use stolen identities to get jobs.

It shows a nice spirit, our willingness to understand that people in hard circumstances do whatever it takes to make a living. But does law matter or not?

We spend countless resources to round up people who are harming themselves with illegal drugs. We spend our money to imprison people who embezzled our money. But when various laws are ignored so we can get new workers, we dither about whether to pursue the issue, whether to prosecute the law-breakers.

Saying that we need people to fill jobs and that American citizens refuse to do the work is a flimsy argument. Economic exigencies come and go, but the law is intended to be a constant, a fixed guidepost towering over the day-to-day crises.

When you can’t fill a job, you raise wages or make the investment necessary to improve the working conditions. You don’t set aside laws because you find them a nuisance.

If we decide that economic reality has changed permanently and the rules have become untenable, it’s time to change the law. If we decide that we’re keeping people out to no purpose, we should move to allow more immigrants to come here legally. If we’re nervous about who’s getting in, we can spend more money to sort through the applicants.

Sometimes the law is out of date or was faulty to begin with. Let’s decide if that’s the case here.

But let’s stop playing this elaborate game of musical chairs, a game in which everybody knows where to find illegal workers and every so often the government decides to put the hammer down.

People come here for paychecks, but it’s our body of law that makes the country work.