Scarcity of building contractors will push up contract values until supply meets demand - and people actually get paid more. This is how the market is supposed to work.
You may support some nativist policies since they are advantageous for the group you are part of, but why try to make it sound like it's some kind of universally just way to do things?
The article is cheerleading illegal immigration because these construction companies and restaurants most likely got away with paying these people below-minimum-wage and were able to violate other labor laws with impunity simply because they were here illegally.
The article with rife with claims that US-born workers don't want these jobs. Well, I live in an area with very low rates of illegal immigration, and magically, all these jobs are filled with native-born inhabitants working minimum wage or sometimes (especially in the case of construction, though there's booms and busts) quite a bit better. Construction was one of the first jobs for a lot of family and friends. I worked at a restaurant for six years, every person who worked there in that time was native-born and paid minimum wage.
I find this excuse highly suspect. I think it has a lot more to do with the reasons discussed above. And I have no sympathy for employers flagrantly exploiting workers.
Small business owners that hire illegal immigrants are able to out-compete business owners who chose to follow the law because they have access to a larger labor pool at lower prices. In most cases the small business owners will be paying in cash and off the books so they will be evading taxes to some extent as well. As these business expand and after above-the-board business owners see their profits erode and market share crumble a larger segment of the market is operating outside the law.
Long term having large segments of your economy routinely breaking tax and labor laws creates a breeding ground for organized crime. I could argue that all these businesses are organized crime but I'm talking about the break-your-knee type of organized crime.
Since the workers are illegal and don't have the protection of the law they are vulnerable to intimidation and it is fairly easy to find your business with a new "partner" when your labor stops showing up one day. What are you going to do? Go to the cops because the mafia won't let your illegal immigrants work for you?
At that point hiring above-the-board labor isn't an option at the prices you charge.
Source?
(Having the majority of your workers off the books tends to look funny.)
One could (and did) make the same argument you are making in favor of all sorts of bad laws - Jim Crow, Davis Bacon, etc. That suggests your argument is probably invalid.
Similarly the market should shift oil and iron from low value places (in the ground) to high value places (e.g. in a steel beam or gas station).
Fact of the matter is that every nation in the world has labor and passport controls. It would be exceptional and unusual for the US to abandon them unilaterally.
The Soviet Union lasted a long time without a free market. Yet nobody would say allowing sellers to choose their own prices is artificial because they've been dictated by the government for decades and that's the normal and natural state of things.
I am concerneded about the harmful effects of democracy that you bring up, but I prefer disenfranchisment as a solution. Preventing people from working is far more harmful than preventing them from voting.