> Undocumented workers do work in farm, janitorial, restaurant, construction, and other sectors that is irreplaceable through any other reasonable means.
There is a fairly obvious reasonable means: Issue them work visas. But there is no lobby to do that because the people doing it prefer the status quo where they're cheating on their taxes and getting out of regulatory requirements companies who hire US citizens have to follow.
Enforcing the law is the best way to get the law to change.
There are huge lobbies supporting seasonal and temporary worker visas.
For one area you mention – farming – there is a specific H-2A seasonal worker visa, and industrial agriculture is a huge lobby.
Hotels, resorts, and other venues use the H-2B non-agricultural temporary worker visas. For example, Trump's properties (in)famously use them to staff up during busy seasons. These companies are also substantial lobbies in favor of guest worker visas.
But these are all temporary work visas, not visas allowing for permanent work and residence in the United States. So they would not cover permanent economic migrants who end up in the restaurant sector or in janitorial work.
> There are huge lobbies supporting seasonal and temporary worker visas.
Precisely. There are huge lobbies for the thing we already have and not for solving the problem that remains:
> But these are all temporary work visas, not visas allowing for permanent work and residence in the United States. So they would not cover permanent economic migrants who end up in the restaurant sector or in janitorial work.
People want cheap domestic labor but refuse to admit to it in writing. They want a "minimum wage" but not the higher prices that implies for common services that require unskilled labor. They want home values and their own corrupt industry's margins to stay high and blame Walmart for not paying a "living wage" under those conditions, while patronizing Walmart because they have lower prices.
You can't have two incompatible things at once and when you demand that, what you get is deception and rules that only exist on paper.
There is a fairly obvious reasonable means: Issue them work visas. But there is no lobby to do that because the people doing it prefer the status quo where they're cheating on their taxes and getting out of regulatory requirements companies who hire US citizens have to follow.
Enforcing the law is the best way to get the law to change.