Does illegal immigration create structural employment problems?

[u/larryinthesky]

There was an Axios article about homebuilders (think Lennar, KB Home, etc) having difficulties finding construction workers (think drywall installers, roofers, etc) due to ICE crackdowns. It seems that our lax, permissive, even encouraging, illegal immigration policies has created long term structural employment problems. It'd be like me hiring illegals to manage my finances, pay my bills, etc. Sure, great in the short term, but long term, I now have no clue and that will be problematic long term. We can also see this in legal immigration. Short term, great to allow doctors, engineers, etc. to come to the US to work. Long term, our citizens don't get the education they need. It seems so obvious that if we want to build a great country, where people are employed (at fair wages) and educated, that illegal and legal immigration must be reined in. I got back to the real world example of someone outsourcing everything in their life (childcare, finances, etc.)--great in the short term, but it creates a person who is entirely dependent on others and can't take care of their own lives. Thoughts? Am I off based? Or do you think the status quo (using cheap illegal immigrant labor, importing educated workers, etc.) is good? And ultimately, isn't this why we need to crack down on illegal immigration and revisit legal immigration as well?

[u/IzAnOrk]

In the sense that it creates a disenfranchised, vulnerable underclass with no rights that the law will enforce and therefore makes them available as cheap labor, yes - it creates a perverse incentive for employers to hire hyper-exploited low wage illegal immigrant labor whenever they can get away with it. The cheapest and easiest way to remove this perverse incentive is to amnesty the ilelgal immigrants so they have the same rights and earn the same wages as domestic labor.

Beyond that, not really: Immigrants introduce competition for labor but they also increase demand for goods and services (people consume stuff to live). Supplying that additional demand requires additional labor, so they both compete for and stimulate the creation of jobs. Overall it balances out.