What the hey are the GOPe afraid of?
>>What the hey are the GOPe afraid of?<<
There is a rational answer, or two actually, one correct, one not so much.
One current of economic thinking goes that more workers equals more wealth for the nation. Those who think that way fear that an aging population will result in diminishing GDP. Obviously that would be true in the extreme, if virtually everyone was retired, although it could still be a country populated by unimaginably wealthy people who made nothing and purchased everything, living off their investments. A few low-population oil-producing countries could be close examples of that I suppose.
But mostly, it’s felt that increasing the labor force increases GDP. What it fails to consider is that individual workers’ wages might not be increasing, and might even be falling relative to other prices. In fact, that could be the case for the past decade or so here in the U.S.
The other reason, a more rational one, is that certain industries would be decimated if immigrant, and particularly immigrant migrant, help is not available. Crops would go unpicked, homes would go unbuilt, or uncleaned at least, etc. Even milk producers hire a lot of migrant help, while complaining that they really need them year round, not seasonally. This is probably true, particularly if you closed the border and sent everyone home who is now here illegally. It’s sort of a “Hey, it’s a mess, but don’t make an even bigger mess when you try to fix it” sort of argument, and it makes some sense, at least in the short term.
All in all though, businesses prefer stability, and most would easily adjust to a stable world where legal immigration was strictly controlled and illegal immigration was curtailed completely. Of course, some industries would adapt in ways we might argue with, but they would adapt.