Me and my family and friends all picked cotton in the sixties. And we weren’t slaves. We just needed to eat. The machines put us out of work and a lot of the old timers were really pissed off about it. There were no other jobs in small southern towns.
I don’t doubt that you worked what you jobs you could to make a living, and did it honorably. But technology advances, and over time it has put a lot of people out of work. But it has also created a lot of new and more profitable work for those who can adapt. Lots of folks used to make their living building wooden barrels (Coopers) or pounding metals into useful shapes (Smiths). Time and technology stand still for no one and the competition has no mercy.
The only choices are advancement or extinction. Stand still and you will get run over. Using illegal immigrant labor is an effort to stop the clock and continue an obsolete model of business and labor.