Legitimizing people's status would definitely help to a degree, but not fully. The wage to earn a significantly higher standard of living than that found in th

Legitimizing people's status would definitely help to a degree, but not fully. The wage to earn a significantly higher standard of living than that found in the poorest Central American nations where most of these human beings come from is significantly lower than the "living wage" that we on the left talk about frequently. "so why not just raise the minimum wage, that'll solve the issue!" is what many say to this. Yes, it would, if the construction, meat packing, agriculture industries were remotely capable of having enforcement against hiring "under the table" workers, which based on my experience in these industries growing up in a rural location of the southern US, isn't possible. At the end of the day, in the short term, demand for labor is relatively fixed, and increasing the supply, even if you ensure that the human beings that are added to the supply are given the rights they deserve, is going to lower the price of labor. Supply and demand doesn't care about our morals. It's indifferent, because individual humans and businesses are going to make rational economic decisions when they rent labor from human beings, and will go for the quieter, cheaper, far less likely to complain about working conditions person than the American who they tell themselves (as they choose the undocumented person) didn't capitalize on the opportunities they were offered being born here and therefore doesn't deserve it. (This is a rationalization I've encountered numerous times, and often it was uttered by people who chose to hire undocumented folks instead of a crew from LaborReady, a short-term labor business that is compliant with the law.)