“Our low paying jobs are not the answer.”
How about our low-paying ALL CASH jobs, paid under the table, no taxes, and our HIGH-paying welfare benefits. Combining these results in a standard of living above that of many United States citizens who actually work and pay taxes.
What we think of as a “low-paying job” can look like a great deal of money in other countries.
Years ago I worked with a lady who had immigrated, legally, from India. She was a nurse there but was working as a nursing assistant here in the US. Her husband, still in India, could not understand why she was not sending money home to him. What she made here looked like a fortune to him.
She was getting some government benefits at that time; she got housing assistance and her son got free lunches in school. She was also a hard worker who had brought her son here to provide him a better life (she and her husband were of different religious backgrounds, which made her son an outcast).
She didn’t stay in her “low-paying” job (or on assistance) long; she worked and got her nursing license here in the US.