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How many businesses would shut down? How many restaurants would go out of business overnight?

As far as I know, restaurants don't have a right to a vast pool of cheap labor.

Too many businesses have this entitlement mentality.

If a few thousand burger joints shut down, that's too bad.

And that goes for construction firms too. No one owes them employees.

As far as I know, restaurants don't have a right to a vast pool of cheap labor.

Too many businesses have this entitlement mentality

And you will set up your own central committe telling how people can run restaurants.

A hint, it was tried before in the place called the Soviet Union, and that place imploded.

If a few thousand burger joints shut down, that's too bad

Sigh.

This is so frustrating. First of all, I disagree with your assessment that it's a few thousand burger joints that get shut down -- because of their deep corporate pockets and high profiles, I think the McDonalds of the world are the ones least likely to hire illegals -- but OK, let's split the difference -- let's say a few thousand places shut down, half burger joints and half actual restaurants.

Let's say it's 3,000 places total, and let's say they're distributed evenly throughout the country -- 60 per state. 30 burger joints, 30 restaurants. Let's say each place employs a total of 50 people, between cooks, counter people/waiters, cleanup crew, management, etc. Let's say 10% are illegals in each place.

Poof, they're shut down. 45 Americans and 5 illegals out of jobs in each place. That's 2,700 Americans and 300 illegals per state; 135,000 Americans and 15,000 illegals nationwide.

Don't leave, because here comes the fun part.

First, we get to deport the foreigners. Let's not forget their families. Let's be conservative and assume that each illegal comes from a two-person household. So we have 30,000 illegals to move. Now, let's figure that 2/3 are Mexican; the rest are from other countries, and assuming very few are Canadian, they'll be needing to be transported via methods other than over land. So, we'll need to bus 10,000 to Mexico -- I have no idea how many people you can fit on a bus, but let's say it's 75, which I think is generous, so that's 133 bus trips to Mexico. Not sure who's paying for the gas or the use of the buses, but I'm sure we can work it out. Now, the other 5,000 illegals, I'll leave it to you to work out the payments to cruise lines (unlikely they'd be volunteering their boats for this) and airlines, though, you might also want to address what happens when the illegal immigrant, with no ID and a false name, tells us they're from country X and country X says "no they're not, we're not taking them."

While you're working on that problem, we'll talk about the 135,000 Americans we just threw out of work. Now, the burger joint ones were probably mainly teenagers, so that's not too important -- unless you own, say, a record store or a gas station or a soda shop or any of the other places where teens spend their spare money -- but let's ignore that problem, too, and figure out how many grown Americans we put out of work. Let's say 20% of the burger joint employees and 80% of the restaurant ones are adults -- so of the 67,500 burger joint Americans we fired, just 13,500 will have families, rents, car payments, etc. to worry about, along with 54,000 of the ones from restaurants. Add them together, that's 67,500 adult Americans now unemployed. And how much money are they now suddenly not spending?

How much did we just save by kicking those 15,000 employed immigrants out of the country?

Feel free to change any of the percentages I picked out of thin air, and correct my math if I fouled any of it up -- but don't miss my points. There are enormous ripple effects possible here, and simply saying "shut down the businesses and round up the workers" is a bit simplistic and ignores a very real possibility of economic disaster.