> Willing to work for less than an American, but somehow doesn’t drive wages down for Americans.
Yeah, they obviously do. That's plain bullshit.
.... ooooon the other hand, we've never tried having an economy without them. We didn't meaningfully limit migration from elsewhere in the Americas until like the '50s, and at the time beginning such enforcement was controversial because we already used them for a ton of cheap farm labor and farmers' interest groups thought it'd ruin them if we significantly limited such migration. The reason their fears didn't manifest as reality is that we simply, and at least in part on purpose, never bothered to enforce those new laws as completely as we technically could, especially for farm labor.
So like they do lower wages (again: obviously) but also they always have, so removing them is a big change from the status quo of practically the entire history of the country's economy. I dunno, worth looking at I guess, but I personally would want to ease into it in case it turns out to be a bad idea.
> Lives in American housing yet somehow doesn’t drive up the cost of housing.
I think the cheap-labor effect on construction probably outweighs this by a good margin. But maybe not.
> Creates ethnic enclaves which mostly speak their own languages yet somehow assimilate into American culture.
Eh. That complaint has been leveled against every prior migrant group, and hasn't held up over the long haul. Even prior waves of hispanic immigrants. I'd need a reason to think it's different this time to give this any credence whatsoever.
Well heck, I see an awful lot of people on the internet trying to argue that they somehow don’t drive wages down for Americans. The number of foreign born people living in the USA is at an all time high, over 5 times larger than what it was in the middle of the last century. Being able to throw cheap labor at a problem is a crutch that keeps people from having to innovate or pay their own countrymen a decent wage. The same argument was used by pro-slavery folks back in the day. “Who will pick the cotton?” was seen as a compelling argument. But when your business is forced to deal with a problem instead of throwing cheap labor at it, you often come up with much better ways to do things and your own fellow citizens share the benefits as well.
>cheap-labor effect on construction probably outweighs this by a good margin
The data shows clearly that immigrants drive up the cost of housing by increasing demand. Americans built our own housing for most of our history, this trend of cheap immigrant labor working most of the construction jobs was not always the case. We could afford to pay construction workers a little bit more and the cost of housing would be more than offset by the reduced housing demand.
>hasn't held up over the long haul
It has absolutely held up, take a trip to any major US city and visit one of its many ethnic enclaves. Many areas of Los Angeles speak exclusively Spanish, you can visit neighborhoods that are indistinguishable from a city in Mexico. The problem is so glaring that the left has switched tactics and hardly even argues that assimilation occurs anymore, rather they argue that “multiculturalism” is the new thing we are supposed to support. Where ethnic enclaves live alongside each other.
Well, entire areas of Los Angeles speaking Spanish seems to be quite normal considering the history of the state? It's like complaining that people in Chinatown speak Chinese.
Lives in American housing yet somehow doesn’t drive up the cost of housing.
Creates ethnic enclaves which mostly speak their own languages yet somehow assimilate into American culture.
The left has plenty of its own contradictory arguments.