Inside the Shadow Economy America Relies On

April 10, 2006 — -- It is a shadow economy, brought to life every morning as the sun comes up in cities and towns across America.

The scene occurs daily in places from South Florida, where trucks and buses carry illegal immigrants to work in the fields, to Duplin County, N.C., where immigrants report to work on farms, to the hardened street corners of Newark, N.J., where undocumented workers wait to be hired.

Jose, an immigrant from Ecuador, told ABC News he came to America with his brother to look for work. He's stood on a Newark street corner every morning for nearly seven years now.

As he talked with ABC News, a van pulled up and, like the workers inside, Jose was off to work. It was just one van out of many that pulled into the neighborhood where undocumented workers scramble for construction jobs daily.

Illegal immigrants produce 9 percent of the goods and services in this country, a staggering $970 billion worth.

And Bob Justich, senior managing director at Bear Stearns, said "America is absolutely hooked on cheap labor."

"If we were to send back or deport all illegal workers tomorrow, it would be the equivalent of emptying New York state," Justich said.

He said removing illegal workers would create an almost deafening sound heard by nearly every American family.

"For example, the two-income family where both people go to work and earn a living -- in many instances, they depend on illegal workers to help provide child care, to do services around the home, landscaping, construction," Justich said.

They are people like Luis, who was looking for cement work on foundations. But he has competition -- 10 percent of all construction workers in the United States are illegal.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, one in four drywall installers and landscapers are undocumented, as are one in five workers in the meat- and poultry-packing industry, and about one in six workers in the leisure and hospitality industry.

Florida farmer Paul Orsenigo will be the first to tell you he needs the workers to harvest his fields, some 1,700 acres worth.