I'm having a hard time understanding the relationship between the ~12M illegal migrants who showed up uninvited over the past 4 years and the labor market. We've always had seasonal workers in agriculture and low-skill jobs, those were managed on a periodic basis and if I had to wager a guess it was a few hundred thousand per year, under specified circumstances. If they weren't bringing kids/family there was also less concern about impacts on public spending on education, Medicaid, etc.
But somehow these 12M or so migrants were all benefitting the economy and keeping prices down? Strange, we've had pretty record inflation over the same period we've had high in-migration. Would inflation have been worse if we didn't let them waltz across the border? There seems to be a handful in NYC and Chicago picking up day jobs for uber eats and similar under-the-table ventures, but a good share of them are subsisting off govt cheese in hotels and shelters, kids getting placed in local schools with all sorts of ancillary needs, blue states offering medicaid programs, etc.
When we talk about immigration, migrants, labor markets, etc we should be very specific about numbers, circumstances, externalities, etc. A dozen eggs were $1.29 3 or so years ago, now they're around $3-4 (bird flu, inflation, fuel, etc). Am I to believe that if we deport a large chunk of these migrants eggs will reach $7? Why weren't eggs $7 BEFORE all this migration happened?
More vague, anachronistic abstractions from the do-gooders and chattering class.