Cynically it appears to be several additional layers of fucked up misdirection. First off the immigration enforcement targeting by employee's effects seems to be geared actively at undermining worker power to say "give me a raise or I will head down the street" by suppression targetted at employees instead of demand while giving a deniable cudgel.
Many of the people complaining about illegal immigrants while benefiting are shocked when their shakedowns result in labor shortages because people actually take them at their word. Regardless of intentions it is worth condemning because nothing works for any valid stated purpose. The resulting system is a massive web of interblended malice and stupidity of actors who refuse to learn that characterizes much of legal policy like the war on drugs. It isn't an American thing or even a capitalism thing. The USSR had plenty of stupid-malicious systems. I suspect sociopaths are to blame in all cases - it bears their thumbprints of dysfunctional systems that benefit them personally and get people to act selfishly in a way that doesn't even benefit them.
Except, of course, Trump is trying to get them to hire workers who are not powerless, and can legally demand the minimum wage and protection under US law at least.
His policies are designed to selectively terrorize migrant labor and make it impossible for them to have recourse to the state. This keeps wages low because no private businesses are seriously penalized for employing migrant labor, but the laborers themselves are at risk of being brutalized by the immigration authorities if they attempt to seek redress for unfair treatment by their employers.
The way to actually resolve the issue would be to aggressively enforce labor laws without regard to the worker's immigration status, because they would remove the incentive for private business to use migrant labor in the first place.
It's not "migrant" labor. It's labor which consists of people who _have broken US law_, and it's hired by people who are also breaking US law. It's like that article a few weeks back which called an armed home invader an "unwanted house visitor". These people _can't legally work here_, like, at all. If this is something you don't like, have your congresspeople change the law. Selective enforcement of laws is an insanely slippery slope, you won't like where it ends.
I'm an immigrant myself. I didn't just come here and start working. I had to go through a lot of hoops so that the US would make sure I wasn't going to be a burden and my presence in the US could be good for the US.
The law is already selectively enforced, which is my point. It's selectively enforced to benefit private business owners at the expense of both migrant laborers (who are brutalized by both the state and extremely harsh and unfair working conditions) and domestic laborers. And the nature of the immigration laws means that non-selective enforcement is impossible, since attempting to do so will always favor the lawbreaking of private business.
The normative question of whether we should or should not harbor resentment or moral outrage against poverty-stricken migrant workers doing backbreaking labor for a pittance isn't really relevant to an analysis of how the government's immigration policies are enforced and who benefits from them.
Seems like you wanted to use the verb "was", at least according to the article. And I very much doubt Trump knowingly hired illegals as there are severe criminal punishments for knowingly hiring more than 10.
Keep in mind that the reason it is being done is for appearances and popularity, not the actual underlying issue.
Most of the things you hear politicians talking about they don't care about beyond how the issue -- and what they say about it -- effects their power and electability.
Yeah he's doing alright on the jobs front by hiring undocumented workers for his own companies at the same time he's sending ICE to rip them out of other companies.
He's trying to prop up the working poor by reducing labor supply. I mean it's either that or putting them on welfare. And I don't know about you but I'd rather they were able to take care of themselves. I'll pay a little more at the grocery store.
Is that with or without full-time benefits? And how do you know the "under the table" labor rates illegals get? Labor will be there if price of labor goes up. Price of labor will go up if supply is constrained. Economics 101. This is not a high skill occupation where there can be a genuine shortage of labor. This is way more elastic.
