Yeah. I hear this argument all the time. I fully agree that illegals take jobs nobody else wants. Of course nobody else wants them because they don't pay minimum wage.
The problem isn't the job itself. As a kid I worked in restaurants, I worked on a farm, I did ranch work, I washed dishes and did lots of these jobs that "no one" is willing to do. The problem is that there are enough employers willing to employ these people at a substandard wage and at substandard working conditions.
I don't blame Americans for not wanting to work this way. After all its against the law.
But lets get hypothetical for a moment. Lets say that we actually did round up every single one of these folks and deported them back home. There isn't any emperical evidence that suggests that our economy would stop. In fact there isn't any evidence that our economy would even suffer.
Since its completely impractical to think that we could snap our fingers and have these illegals disappear, its also impractical to think that prices for things like vegetables would skyrocket over night. And since we are on that subject, would anybody here really be distraught if they had to pay $1.00 more for a cucumber? So what if brocolli increases 200%. You'll have to pay $3.00 instead of a buck. I'd say that's well worth knowing that the immigration laws are being enforced and that jobs are going to people who are here legally.
There is another problem here too. People like yourself always focus on the costs of booting out these criminals (because if we are honest thats what they are, criminals) but always ignore the benefits. How much money is spent on fees for emergency room care, or welfare, or food stamps. How much money has been obtained via fradulent means by use of fradulent documents.
To be perfectly blunt I'd be very surprised if we didn't actually prosper financially by deporting these folks. A trip to the ER costs alot more than some lima beans and a head of lettuce.