I am completely for bringing illegal entry into this country back under control - but that's not what I am discussing here.
If you completely eliminated illegals from the picture, the minimum wage is still the minimum wage and you are not going to get min-wage jobs to pay $12-$15/hour just to provide Americans jobs who are not willing to work for $7/hour.
If you LEGISLATE $15/hour, costs will go up to equalize that burden and then you will need $23/hour and the cycle begins again.
So what do businesses do when they can't get 15,000 hand laborers to come to where the crops are ready for harvest or new developments are being constructed or neighborhoods need work? Again, I'm not justifying anything, I'd like to hear some real solutions and not suppositions where Americans will supposedly do any job and that businesses should just suck it up and pay $25/hour for hand labor jobs.
"just to provide Americans jobs who are not willing to work for $7/hour."
The illegals won't work for $7/lhr either and don't.
Even the lowest of them, the street pickups, won't work for less than $8/hr CASH, lunch, and free transportation.
If the people hiring them made and paid the deductions like they do to americans the illegls wouldnt work for $8/hr, they would demand $12.
Most of the ones with steady employment make $20/hr, still cssh, and more.
Even the ones hired by landscapers which I consider grunt no talant labor make $20/hr and more.