[garbanzo]

Service and agricultural jobs wouldn't be so undesirable if the illegals never were here. If we had a closed job market, all Americans would be better off with the higher wages--as a nation, we'd have a higher standard of living.

Here's a first lesson in free-market economics.

The market sets prices and relative values of good and services. Simply making low-value serivces more expensive only forces the prices of everything else up. We will always pay more for software developers than fruit pickers. Raising the price for fruit-pickers will do nothing other than raise the price for software developers, in addition to raising to prices for food. Everyone gets a pay raise but everyone also has to pay higher prices for everything.

[FITZ]

In many areas of the country, the illegals won't pick fruit either so then someone invents machines that pick fruit faster, better and cheaper. Machines are why the costs of many things are down because it doesn't take $7000 a year in property taxes to pay for the education of each one of their kids. Illegals aren't cheap when you add up costs to educate them, provide their free health care, food stamps and all the rest.