Abstract
I. Introduction The issue of whether hiring illegal workers constitutes an unfair method of competition is presently emerging from an embryonic stage of hypothetical consideration to a potentially viable jurisprudential issue. 2 Although identified, acknowledged and even advocated within the current debate regarding immigration reform, 3 the issue has been essentially ignored within the jurisprudential landscape of domestic competition law. This article addresses the viability of an unfair competition claim grounded on the act of hiring illegal workers from an economic perspective. This article's analysis proceeds in five parts. Part I serves as an overview. Part II introduces and descriptively analyzes the jurisprudential/economic issue in question, as well as chronicles recently filed inter-competitor lawsuits seeking relief from the illegal hiring practices of a horizontal competitor. Part II also demonstrates that the issues addressed herein are timely and relevant with respect to the current socio-economic debate regarding U.S. immigration policy. Part III reviews the economic objectives of the antitrust laws, and supplements and bolsters the reader's understanding of the interdisciplinary relationship between law and economics within the context of antitrust law and the regulation of competition. In this regard, Part III introduces and explains the fundamental microeconomic constructs that drive the efficiencies of the perfectly-competitive model. Part III further argues that a robust understanding of the fundamental economic tenets of the perfectly-competitive economic model is a necessary predicate to understanding actionable anticompetitive behavior. More importantly, Part III describes and illustrates the analytical relevance of the perfectly-competitive model's conditions of ...