One could also say that having an abundance of a cheap, low quality resource, steers the economy into exploiting it instead of learning to use better alternativ

One could also say that having an abundance of a cheap, low quality resource, steers the economy into exploiting it instead of learning to use better alternatives. In the case of low-skilled immigrant workers, this means not being forced to improve processes and technologies, because you can rely on a lot of cheap, unskilled manual labour. Same logic, and I think a little bit less far-fetched than yours.