There are only 2 million unemployed Americans right now. Most of the illegal immigrants have jobs and fill in the gaps, such as working on farms and factories. If the 20 million illegal immigrants are deported, want that create a massive laborer shortage? Won’t the work follow the workers to Mexico?
I don’t think you’re taking the price hikes seriously enough. Look how lemmy bitches non-stop about grocery prices. Imagine if we had to actually pay agricultural workers. And it ain’t the rich people going to suffer. Poverty is expensive.
Also, most farmers are living hand-to-mouth. They take loans every year for seed, repairs, new equipment, etc., all to bet their crop profits them. Rinse and repeat, and one bad year might cost your home and land. Some might say that take is crap and point to megacorps like Tyson. Megacorps aren’t what I see traveling the countryside. Riding the Southern highways, I see thousands of small farms. I see broken gear and collapsed structures than can’t be removed because of the cost.