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The trouble is that it doesn't really work like that. So go ahead, punish the legislature and fuck the farm lobby. After all, we're not farmers. Except now there's a labor shortage and farmers can't find anyone willing to pick fruit for 25 cents a bushel or whatever the going migrant rate is. Part of the labor market is not just that you have to pay someone to do something, but you also have to pay them not to do something else. So instead of competing against Guatamalan day labor you're competing against all the jobs that aren't exempt from minimum wage (and few places are even paying minimum wage anymore). So either you let half your harvest die in the fields or pay twice as much as you normally would to bring it in, and now food costs more and everyone's bitching. Considering that migrant workers are the backbone of everything that hasn't been mechanized, the question is how much more you're willing to pay for produce so that you don't have to worry about immigrants. And just because you might be willing to pay a little more doesn't mean that most people would agree with you, even other people who are nominally anti-immigration.
Yes, there will be an economic cost to more muscular anti-illegal operations. I'm willing to see the nation pay economic costs in order to thwart illegal invasions. The cost of not doing so is worse.
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