The availability of dirt-cheap illegal Mexican peasant labor is actually retarding advances in mechanization in agriculture that other countries are using, and in the long-run substantially hindering our productivity.
In other areas, like construction, illegals are crowding out native-born workers.
Yes, the price of lettuce and new construction is lower than would be the case without the cheap illegal labor force, but that's only because the total cost of the workforce has been shifted onto others.
The illegals pay little in taxes, send much of their earnings out of the country, and live in a welfare state where they are adding huge burdens to the cost of public schools, prisons (and the entire criminal justice system), health care (hospital emergency rooms must treat them even though they cannot pay, or cannot pay at the same rate Americans must pay). We all know that eventually the illegals will be given some form of amnesty and the eventual social security burden of this vast group of low-wage earners will ultimately be the final burden that sinks that program.
The biggest problem is that unlike past immigrant groups, the second and third generation are not graduating from high school and moving up the economic ladder, and since they are not as willing to clean hotel rooms or pick lettuce, we see increases in gang membership, single teenage mothers and large new additions to the underclass. And of course, businesses utilizing cheap illegal labor will need to import even more of it because the following generations do not want to do that work, thus the whole cycle spirals out of control, and larger and larger swaths of society will begin to resemble third-world societies, with a caste of well-educated elites and the native-born middle class becoming divided between those joining the elites in their gated communities and those pulled down into the lowest caste.
>>>>>>In other areas, like construction, illegals are crowding out native-born workers.
I’ve actually run the numbers.
In the late 70’s myself and my college pals were making $6/hr or so as general laborers. One year I happened upon a federal contract (DC MetroRail) and got $8/hr.
By any common measure such as the inflation rate or the CPI, that $6 to $8 and hour would now be $22 to $28 an hour.
Anecdotally I hear that illegals (who have completely taken over all unskilled labor jobs are making $12 to $15 an hour.
So illegals have underbid American workers by about 50 percent since the late 1970’s.