Speaking of coke, the cheapest place for coke is Bolivia at $6/gram and Mexico at $14/gram. And yet neither of these countries have an extensive immigration policy. LOL https://www.statista.com/chart/18527/cocaine-retail-steet-prices-in-selected-countries/
Robots!! I have both robotic vacuum cleaner and a robotic pool cleaner and they work great!! There are robotic lawn mowers now and there are Japanese restaurants that are completely manned by robots. Robots are the key to increase in productivity, not illegal immigrants. There is a reason why they are called "illegal" immigrants. It's because they are not supposed to be there. United States does have immigration policy that allows immigrants to come to United States.
We are not working less hours today. And things are much better now because of innovation, research & development, not from illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is basically filling jobs that could be easily done by robots.
Nobody here disputes that automation will replace workers in the future, regardless of whether one is here legally or illegally. Everyone will eventually get replaced by the bots. But that requires a lot of capital expenditure that a whole lot of business cannot afford. Hence why they used these illegal immigrants in the first place.
I just illustrated to you illegal immigrants carry their own cost which is not less than capital expenditure and you also illegal immigrants are human too so there is also social and humanity cost that carry with them too or are you saying you are planning to treat illegal immigrants like machines? At the end, you are not going to get decrease in inflation or decrease in cost if you have no net ((productivity - cost) increase in productivity. This is why immigration, legal or illegal does not always work. Europe is learning about that now.
Possibly to the taxpayers but not necessarily to the business owners. As a business owner, you could theoretically get away by only paying minimum wage to illegal immigrants (or even lower by sleezily blackmailing them that you would call the immigration) than to spend money on expensive machines and robots. This way, you don't need to report their wage to the government and thereby skip paying FICA and insurance, or whatnot. Anyway, I ain't agreeing or disagreeing here. I just don't think it's realistic, as others have already pointed out, to deport every illegal immigrants you can find without some major economic repercussions.
They are illegal immigrants which means they weren't supposed to be here in the first place. Whether there would be economic repercussions from deporting or not deporting them is irrelevant nor is it a question that should be raised.
You are missing 90% of this picture and you are forcing your 10% narrowed down logic. In a country and in a society you need people. To vote, To pay taxes, To sell to as consumers, To fill costly colleges and universities, To supplement city and county and state tax needs, To pay tariffs, to police and fight fires and most importantly, To Fill the Needs of Defense and Army. In other words the top 1% ''need people'' to stay in the top 1%. And the dumber and more third world these people are, the better. Automation cannot fill those needs. Automation is mostly economical on a large production scale. Once they were allowed into the country, their illegal status is kind of moot. You can start to deport people. But certainly not in the mass way they came in. Because they have already filled many of the above needs. Your logic, your argument, your very narrow thinking... it gives me a huge headache.