This argument sounds compassionate but actually reveals something uncomfortable: it's built on the premise that we need a permanent underclass willing to work for wages Americans won't accept. That's closer to exploitation than compassion.

The economic evidence is clear. Harvard economist George Borjas, himself an immigrant, found that immigration between 1980 and 2000 reduced wages for American workers without a high school diploma by 7.4%. The workers most affected are disproportionately Black and Hispanic Americans who compete directly with low-skilled immigrants for jobs in construction, agriculture, food service, and manufacturing.

The claim that 'Americans won't do these jobs' really means 'Americans won't do these jobs at the wages employers want to pay.' In a functioning labor market, when you can't find workers, you raise wages. The meatpacking industry, for example, used to be a middle-class union job paying the equivalent of $25-30 per hour in today's dollars. After the industry shifted to immigrant labor, wages and conditions deteriorated.

During COVID-19, when immigration slowed dramatically, what happened? Wages for low-skilled workers surged. Restaurants, farms, and construction companies raised pay and still found workers. The labor shortage argument is really an argument for keeping wages artificially low.

Agriculture often gets special mention, but farm labor is only about 1% of U.S. employment. The H-2A temporary agricultural visa program allows legal farm workers to come seasonally. There's already a legal mechanism for this.

I'm all for a functioning guest worker program and legal immigration of skilled and needed workers. But the idea that we need millions of people working off the books for below-market wages — and that this somehow helps them or us — doesn't hold up.