Sorry, I can not put aside the legal nor the philosophical because I am looking at the practical.
You are not the one being practical or legal and only philosophical. If your employer hires someone over you, that is his choice, however if he hires someone not eligible to be employed (i.e. illegal alien,) you have every right to call the authorities.
We are a nation of laws and because parts of our government refuse to enforce those laws, law abiding citizens are being harmed.
The Fortune 500 companies in IL have no one to blame but themselves for helping to elect the ones that make it so miserable to work there and so compelling to sit on one's butt and have the working folks pay them.
At the other end I see a need for unskilled workers to clean the offices I work in. There is no education or experieince requirement. Yet it is diofficult to find and of the many unskilled, uneducated Americans who are willing to do the work.
Yet those same companies won't hire educated Americans willing to do the work. Been there, done that. Unfortunately I have learned I can not pass myself off as someone with only a HS education and thus have been unable to obtain employment, and I have tried. And these have been big companies being VERY meticulous about making sure applicants are employable in the US. When 45 people show up for 3 openings, all knowing they have to eligible to be employed there, it sure tells me there are people willing to work.
What you are telling me and what I have experienced tells me a few things: It is easier to mooch off the system than be gainfully employed in Illinois and it is easier to be gainfully employed than it is to mooch of the system in Virginia.
Smaller, less intrusive government works.
“It is easier to mooch off the system than be gainfully employed in Illinois”
We agree on IL. I’m no expert on VA. But I do get a lot of recruiters begging me to go to job openings they are having a hard time filling in the Arc from DC to FL to TX. So I doubt the job market is that bad in VA.
Entitlement mentality is the root cause of much of our problem. Once people have the entitlement mentality, there is less motivation to improve one’s education; less reason to be motivated for anything except gaming the system.