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Originally Posted by Mavdog
what leads you to believe that the "lowest wage workers" will not be replaced? there remains the demand for these manuel labor jobs, and they will be filled, albeit by workers at a higher per unit cost.
so nothing is going to be "tak[en] away".
these are jobs that have no true job skills other than physical health. with no substantial requirements/barriers to entry of the worker, the pool of workers is incredibly vast.
they are just not motivated.
the factor that suggests a decrease in productivity is simple. the workers who will be employed as laborers lack the work ethic the immigrants have.
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If I can boil down your argument I think it would be (corect me if I'm wrong):
"American productivity would go down if we kicked out the immigrants because Indiginous-Americans are lazier."
Now, I assume you are limiting that laziness label to the "unskilled" Americans that would be filling most of the positions vacated by the kicked out aliens. Even if that is the case,then two points:
(A) that is a pretty broad brush you are painting with, think what it would sound like if you tried to paint the other direction: "Mexicans get paid less because they are lazy" I know that you in fact said the opposite, but using race or nationality as an indicator of level of laziness is an exercise fraught with landmines.
(B) assuming your thesis is correct, and that all the positions vacated by illegals would be filled, but by Americans that are lazier (and thus less productive) than the workers they replaced... then the implication from that scenario is that the current wage for unskilled labor is not too low for americans to accept the work available, it is actually too high for american firms to accept the level of effort that wage will buy from american workers!