The bigger challenge will be food production. Even with fewer people, less Americans are willing to work in the fields 10 hours a day under a hot sun. With the immigration crackdown and low birth rates and aging population, who will pick the strawberries? Compound this with food production is a major export, our internal consumption will require more and more of the produced food, lowering exports and GDP. This will make food scarce and expensive, further lowering fertility.
Low fertility and no immigration is a recipe for disaster.
We could survive without cheap strawberries if we had to, but we won't have to. Plenty of Americans used to do farm labor and other difficult work before mass migration pushed the wages for those jobs below sustainable levels for citizens. The idea that Americans have changed in some fundamental way that makes them "unwilling" to do hard work is just another lie from corporations bent on getting as much cheap foreign labor as possible.
“When I was a curly headed baby
My daddy set me down on his knee
Saying boy you go to school and you learn your letters
Don’t become no dusty miner boy like me.”
These jobs aren’t undesirable because they pay too little, they’re undesirable because they’re more difficult and unpleasant than a service or office job. People have been encouraging their kids across cultures and time to strive for higher skilled labor / work not purely for economic reasons alone but because those jobs are better. It’s not a lie they’re unwilling to do it because everyone is unless they have other job options. Forcing people through economic and labor pressure back into their fields for migratory field labor is one of those things that probably sounds good for other people and not yourself, eh?
