Interesting to consider in this context how illegal immigration has facilitated a continuing and escalating cost to society by subsidizing labor and environmental externalities for inefficient (and ultimately ill-fated) industries.
I guess that would do a good job at making poor Americans more competitive against undocumented workers
Most of the things you hear politicians talking about they don't care about beyond how the issue -- and what they say about it -- effects their power and electability.
The way to actually resolve the issue would be to aggressively enforce labor laws without regard to the worker's immigration status, because they would remove the incentive for private business to use migrant labor in the first place.
I'm an immigrant myself. I didn't just come here and start working. I had to go through a lot of hoops so that the US would make sure I wasn't going to be a burden and my presence in the US could be good for the US.
Of which Trump himself is guilty of [0]. Why isn't Trump in jail for that specific crime already then? You see the parent's point now?
[0] - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-trump-organization-emp...
I very much doubt any somewhat-savvy businessperson hires illegals "knowingly". In other words, it's just plausible deniability.
The normative question of whether we should or should not harbor resentment or moral outrage against poverty-stricken migrant workers doing backbreaking labor for a pittance isn't really relevant to an analysis of how the government's immigration policies are enforced and who benefits from them.
Many of the people complaining about illegal immigrants while benefiting are shocked when their shakedowns result in labor shortages because people actually take them at their word. Regardless of intentions it is worth condemning because nothing works for any valid stated purpose. The resulting system is a massive web of interblended malice and stupidity of actors who refuse to learn that characterizes much of legal policy like the war on drugs. It isn't an American thing or even a capitalism thing. The USSR had plenty of stupid-malicious systems. I suspect sociopaths are to blame in all cases - it bears their thumbprints of dysfunctional systems that benefit them personally and get people to act selfishly in a way that doesn't even benefit them.