Originally Posted by AmateurFlix

Of course, that's just a natural progress of technology; there will always be activities that machines simply cannot do better or more efficiently than man, however washing dishes / tending fields / etc. are not presently among these tasks in most instances.

The problem for most farmers small businesses etc will not be an increased production cost to move away from manual labor; that will most likely decrease - and considerably in most instances - over any significant period of time. Eventually this will in turn provide a greater benefit to consumers as the cost savings are passed on.

The problems business will most likely face will be ones of capital investments. IE it's probably easier for a farmer to pay a few mexican families in cash on a week by week basis to tend the fields than it would be for them to come up with enough money to pay for a new piece of farm equipment all at once. However if they have to spend 5 years worth of immigrant wages in order to purchase a machine that will greatly reduce labor costs for the next 20 years, this starts to make more economic sense in the long term.

Middle class Americans may not like the idea of picking fruit for minimum wage, however they probably wouldn't have as much of a problem with operating a harvesting machine for more reasonable pay. So instead of employing for instance several dozen illegals at minimum wage or less the farmer ends up paying one american machine operator a decent living wage.

The proliferation of cheap and illegal (but tolerated) labor in this country is just one more symptom of a much larger problem of selling off long term stability and growth in exchange for short term gain.