As Marine Le Pen aptly stated a week ago, “They want low cost labour, to make low cost products, for the poor and unemployed to purchase with their government benefits, therefore keeping the poor and disenfranchised happy and in line.”
I think that’s an oversimplification, at best. The “poor and disenfranchised [sic]” are not the consumers of much of the output of illegal immigrant workers. The poor are not hiring housekeepers, nannies, cleaning services, lawn services, construction workers, low-skilled medical-care workers. They are generally not eating the fresh fruits and vegetables planted and harvested by migrant agricultural workers. It is the wealthy and the middle-class who consume these products and services.
The underclass are consuming high-tech products such as cell phones, computer games, giant televisions, Facebook and other social media, etc. These items are often produced by poor workers in China or Bangladesh, but the big money and intellectual heft involves Indian, Pakistani, or Iranian engineers and programmers who are usually legal immigrants earning good-to-great pay.
The poor are also “consume” a good deal of government, especially at the state and local levels. Government units are a significant employer of legal immigrants.
“They want low cost labour, to make low cost products, for the poor and unemployed to purchase with their government benefits, therefore keeping the poor and disenfranchised happy and in line.”
This is a very good quote — and it could have been written by Herbert Marcuse.