There are only 2 million unemployed Americans right now. Most of the illegal immigrants have jobs and fill in the gaps, such as working on farms and factories. If the 20 million illegal immigrants are deported, won’t that create a massive laborer shortage? Won’t the work follow the workers to Mexico?
Well. It kind of is bad, when those businesses are, for instance, farms. Or factories producing food. Imagine, if you will, a scenario where people working in the fields picking whatever suddenly had to be paid at least minimum wage (and probably a lot more, because that works sucks), rather than a piece rate. Productivity would probably drop–no incentive to work yourself to death anymore–but costs would rise. Those costs would have to be passed on to consumers, and that would ripple across the entire economy in a big way.
That’s not bad. Costs are supposed to rise to match the supply with the demand. That’s literally how this all works.
These jobs should be automated out of existence. Every time the cost goes up that becomes more and more viable.