[yongjik]

You're putting the cart in front of the horse. If the US economy didn't need low-wage immigrant workers, we wouldn't be complaining about them in the first place, because they would've gone somewhere else where the jobs are.

The fact they're coming the US literally means its economy needs them.

Of course we could all wax philosophical and say "Nobody needs a Frappuccino every other day, we just want it," but then nobody needs to live in a prosperous economy anyway.

[skew-aberration]

There's always work available if someone is asking for a low enough wage, that should be self-evident. How does this prove that the population at large benefits from more people being willing to work for low wages?

Classical economics would argue that higher population tends to increase productivity (economies of scale and specialization) while lowering wages, increasing land value, and improving returns on capital. Free trade has a very similar effect. You can find this analysis in all standard texts (Smith, Riccardo, etc) and even progressive works such as Progress and Poverty by Henry George.

Different groups are free to have different opinions of this tradeoff. Big landowners benefit immensely while working class renters only suffer.

[thrownthatway]

> The fact they're coming the US literally means its economy needs them.

Not necessarily. As just one example, it could mean one of their family immigrated for a well paying job, and now they want their parents, or other family, to join them and they don’t have skills in a high paying industry.

The presence of low income wage earners does not, by force of nature nor economics, require them.

Having said that, I tend to against minimum wage policy.