To be fair, we’ve made it easy for the employers to marginalize American workers. I had a lot of bad jobs on the 1970s before the immigration wave- mostly as a student. My co-workers included HS drop outs, alcoholics, ex-cons, as well as working class Americans bouncing around. We were pretty unreliable- people quit all the time or didn’t show up, and integrating student labor was challenging as working hours and times of year for work were limited. Then again, hiring people wasn’t that hard, either. Strangely, the economy was bad but low level jobs were easy to get and easy to quit.

Enter a massive illegal workforce. Usually Harder-working, more reliable (thankful for tbe job and shows up every day, all day) and often cheaper, too, as they aren’t legal.

Now it is very difficult for itinerant Americans and students to get those sorts of jobs so they go on disability and play video games or whatever,

Really easy for the employer. Cheap, reliable labor is so good that they don’t invest in machinery to automate grape harvesting or meat packing like many other countries have. The US doesn’t build a robotics or machine tool industry because, hey- we have cheap humans to do the work.

Not sure this has left the US in a good place. I think we need to get high school students working and our employers need to invest in training and apprenticeships and capital equipment. I want to keep the law abiding, working immigrants as most of them are good people. It is not their fault that we made it easy for employers to profiteer. Almost as if the US had its own Hukuo system.