I know a couple housekeepers at our local resort who worked this past season six months pregnant and for minimum wage. That's not easy work, especially at this place because there is so little help and they do have to move heavy objects.
If you are correct and no American would work those jobs at minimum wage, yet we removed the illegals and decreased the number of legal immigrants, those wages would still have to move higher until those lazy Americans would take the job. That would be the market equilibrium. So the major producers would have to take a hit for the benefit of American workers, and I don't see a problem with that.
I think it comes down to whether you believe in supply-side or demand-side economics.
Personally, I don't want to see our produce prices rise to cover for wages to lure more locals because we're already getting insanely obese as a society as it is on processed foods. But it is an artificial marketplace.
I have to hand it to you, Andy. For a guy who rants like a 72-year-old, crotchety grandpa ( see:

), deep down you're really a softie for the underclass.
That's actually a complement.
Another thing you do not realize is many of them receive help from local food banks and shelters that is not recorded and many of these social programs are already over loaded with the thousands of homeless citizens who already cannot be supported.
I don't follow this. What charities do you know decide to stiff people based on their country of origin? When do the sympathies for other people in need from charitable donors suddenly switch off at a national border?
Don't give me any bleeding heart nonsense or sob stories about poor Mexicans because appealing to emotion is a poor argument. I would much rather have a state that works for and supports those who work for and support it than one who takes care of the world's poor and fucks those of us who actually are here legally.
You're making a gross generalization here that borders on outright racism, btw. I know you feel that you're being mislabeled as a racist for thinking that way. But any time you corral a group of people and brandish them as all lazy, on the dole, money-grubbers, and non-contributors to society -- that's a racist's hallmark.
Not calling you racist here, I'm just saying you're fitting the archetype for many people's definition of one.
You have to understand there are other people who look at who the homeless are in this country, and they see illegal immigrants trying to work their asses off to make something of their lives that NAFTA killed for the small farmer in Mexico. They see people who came here to risk their lives and their families not to take a hand-out and get fat. And meanwhile there are many citizens in that latter category. (Just ask Vinman.

)
Seriously -- when I went on my brother's ridealong last year (he's a cop in Concord, near your neck of the woods), all the questionable legals we came across were working four jobs. The people loafing on the streets and hanging out at liquor stores were clearly here for at least a generation.
That said, we did come across a lot of potential kids of said immigrants who definitely were not doing their time in schools. Ironically, by place of their birth, they are citizens. And yet that illegal immigrant status of their parents would make many prefer that these cretins never go to school anyway -- which just exacerbates the problem.