Hacker Cinema
Borderline
1980 · Film · 104 min
Directed by Jerrold Freedman
Jeb Maynard is a patrolman guarding the U.S.-Mexican border, whose partner and buddy Scooter has just been murdered. Maynard knows that a smuggler of illegal aliens is responsible for Scooter's death, but the feds insist that drug dealers committed the crime.
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I applaud you for your sanity, despite it risking not being politically correct.
I'll risk being even less PC and point out the elephant in the room: illegal immigrants aren't an insignificant factor.
If I'm to trust my anlysis of the context of popular media[1], illegal immigration was already considered a problem by the late 70s. Does anyone know how many people were included in amnesties[2]?
My belief here is that "undocumented" workers aren't subject to the same rules, parrticularly minimum wage. If there are millions of illegal immigrants (not all of whom are workers, granted), there are already jobs out there.
The question is, can those jobs pay at least minimum wage? Even if they could, how many currently unemployed would be willing and able to work them. This, as it applies to farm labor, has been discussed previously on YC[3].
Your mentioning cleaning houses, however, is what prompted me to think in this direction. One of the most valuable things the agencies provide is a membrane of legitimacy, shielding the customer from the liability and administrative headaches (insurance, which you mention, being one of them) of being an employer.
In any case, I agree that finding or creating productive (even minimum wage worthy) work for unskilled (not-yet-skilled?) labor is beneficial to the economy and society as a whole. The confounding factor is that such work in the US tends to attract such labor from outside our borders. I posit that even a successful effort would have no effect until the flow is stopped.
Whether stopping the ingress of unskilled workers is feasible, politically or economically, is another matter.
[1] Borderline (1980) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080465/
[2] e.g. IRCA, NACARA
[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1500872