[trilbyglens]

Because the system is designed to allow these people in a gray zone, so they do not have access to the same rights as citizens and therefore can be exploited. The problem is not illegal immigration. It's just a political football. Our economy would fily collapse without this cheap labor to exploit.

[neither_color]

The US refuses to admit it has always had an addiction to cheap labor so it entices desperate people to come over with the implicit assumption that if they keep their head down and are otherwise law-abiding it'll "look the other way." Some of them, after years of living on the outskirts of town, commuting 1.5 hours each day to back-breaking minimum wage jobs, and years without seeing their families, are able to scrounge up enough money to pay a lawyer thousands to help them get normalized. Only now they're being spawn-camped at court hearings too.

If the US were more self-aware and honest it would expand existing guest worker programs and create new pathways for temp labor to work without obtaining citizenship the way Singapore and Middle Eastern countries do. They seem cruel but at least each side of the equation knows what it's getting and they can even visit home every year! But Americans' hubristic tendency is to look at a place like Singapore or some other new skyline in the middle east or Asia and declare smugly "borderline slaves built that."

[riskable]

The only reason we don't reform our work visa programs for cheap labor is because business owners do NOT want to have to pay these people minimum wage, pay taxes on them, or pay to insure them (workman's comp and similar). That's it. That's all there is to it.

As soon as you institute such a program businesses could get sued for illegal labor conditions, abuses of employees, sexual abuse of employees, violations of contract law, and more. Their expenses for imported labor would probably triple.

Would such businesses close as a result? Maybe a handful would but the real impact would be a huge drop in profits—also known as a greater share of profits going to workers.

[andrewflnr]

> Americans' hubristic tendency is to look at a place like Singapore or some other new skyline in the middle east or Asia and declare smugly "borderline slaves built that."

FWIW, I bet the part of the population saying that is also the part opposed to the current immigration enforcement, namely liberals.

[andrewflnr]

I can't even tell who I've offended with this comment.

[trashtester]

It would not collapase. But it would shift some purchaing power from the middle class to the working class if all of them would leave, as working class salaries would go up even faster than the inflatino it would cause.

[thesuitonym]

The middle class and the working class are the same thing. If you have to work to live, you are working class, it doesn't matter how much income you make or how many investment properties you own.

The whole working class/middle class divide was made up by the rich to get you to vote against your interests, and propped up by pick-mes who want to feel like they're better than someone.

[fzeroracer]

Our economy absolutely would collapse. Our entire farming industry exists because of heavily abused immigrant labor, and is a job that Americans refuse to take. We've made multiple swings and attempts at getting Americans to do this work [1] but it's low pay, low benefits and grueling work. Farmers literally could not afford the actual salary needed to attract people to do said labor, and it would cause food prices across the US to skyrocket.

The only way this would stabilize is if the government came in and subsidized and socialized farm work heavily and that would also never happen.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/31/634442195/wh...

[bombcar]

Of all illegals disappeared Thanos-style, the end result would be massively expensive certain crops, and a greater dependency on machine-farmable crops, like corn.

[ben_w]

And some weird severe-but-short-term economic volatility.

Something along the lines of:

Now nobody is picking fruits, all the fruits die on the tree/vine, so there's none of that in the supermarket and those farms go bankrupt. Also, most of those who were paid to butcher the cattle are gone, but the cows are still there, costing the farmers money, so those farms go bankrupt. And then so do the feed suppliers for cattle farmers that don't ranch (or do but need extra feed besides the grass). But everyone still needs to eat, which means there's correspondingly more demand for the stuff which is heavily mechanised, so prices for that go way up, but because this is an instant supply shock the average person is still hungry no matter what the prices are, unless the humans start eating alfalfa en-masse.

[anon025]

Not only that, most of the construction and home services companies are usually the white American folks that come and give you a very inflated price and then send you the immigrants to do the actual hard work. It's crazy when you speak to the people doing the work how much they are getting paid vs how much you are paying.

[actionfromafar]

Why would it not happen? It would be yet another opportunity for the God King to give handouts to his subjects.

[yubblegum]

> inflatino

please tell me that's not a typo /g

[ath3nd]

> working class salaries would go up even faster than the inflatino it would cause.

Good, working class salaries need to be high! We can't function as a society without all the people who dispose of our garbage, maintain our plumbing and water supply, grow our food, provide our electricity, and support our IT infrastructure.

Only one clarification: there is no difference between lower class, middle class and working class. White collar or blue collar, we are all collared.

The middle class construct is artificially invented so the owning class (people who don't have to work for their money) have something for the workers to aspire to. A software engineer with $300k/y is far closer wealth wise to a minimum wage worker in Mickey-D than they are to your Tim Cooks, Jeff Bezos and Adolf, pardon, Elon Musk.

In a Tesla, Prius or in a old Dodge, you are still stuck in traffic while they are flying with private jets.

[fragmede]

We are all closer to being millionaires than Jeff Bezos.

[Gareth321]

Exactly. It would rebalance the value provided by blue collar work. They could finally demand a higher wage without being undercut by illegal workers.

[ath3nd]

I find it super funny that the average Joe will condemn an "illegal" worker for undercutting another, but never ask themselves the question who employed that "illegal" worker.

How come the blame is not solely on the businesses willingly employing thousands of "illegal workers", not paying tax on them nor health benefits, and not even minimum wage, and in that way undercutting the value of blue collar labor?