No, for two reasons. The first is that Americans often refuse to work those jobs (and for good reason, they pay incredibly poorly, have no benefits etc. It is generally a financial loss to do said jobs). We've tried multiple times to try and get Americans to work in the fields: it never works [1]. The second is that a large amount of our economy is heavily subsidized by said cheap immigrant labor and if you just straight up remove that labor, then the costs of everything goes up as many farms go out of business and die. That's just assuming that you somehow got Americans to go out and replace said jobs; suddenly removing 1+ million people from any labor pool would have drastic effects on the rest of the economy.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/31/634442195/wh...

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reliabilityguy 3 days ago | parent [-]

> The first is that Americans often refuse to work those jobs (and for good reason, they pay incredibly poorly, have no benefits etc. It is generally a financial loss to do said jobs).

Would Americans work those jobs if those jobs paid well?

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fzeroracer 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You should define what 'paid well' means if you're going to ask that question, and then compare it to the current cost of labor.

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PicassoCTs 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Those jobs can not pay well, because the basic living goods have to be artificially price dumped to remain affordable for the working poor. Otherwise all prices would have to be raised to include this, which will never happen.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		That seems to be inconsistent with the continued negligence with respect to housing prices. Maybe it would be fine if food cost more because agricultural workers got paid better but housing cost less because we stopped artificially constraining supply.