My apologies. The "suddenly" gave me the impression this was something that was happening quickly.
No, I do not believe the economy will perform poorly as a result. The savings in social services alone will be considerable. I can see the economy being "smaller" but stronger.
Allowing more legal immigration at the same time is a bad idea in my book. The system cannot adequately screen and police the million or so they are processing now.
A well regulated guest worker program is always an option should we need, after we have control of the border. Personally, I would like to see the program limited to agricultural work and only the sponsored worker is allowed to come for a specific amount of time. My fear is a guest worker plan will simply open up any job to a foreign worker, reducing wages further and put Americans out of work.
There was a CATO Institute forum on C-Span last year and one of the guests was from the Bush administration. She said the worker program would be open to every sector of the economy and that if they had kids they would automatically be citizens. The plan was and still is to force all Americans to compete with foreigners for jobs in their own country.
Btw I agree with you, if the guest worker program were limited to only agriculture then it might be far more easier to swallow.