@MWolf , nice family story. Too bad we are a century past the roaring '20’s. We have plenty of our own unskilled citizens to train, we certainly don’t need to import more as unskilled jobs are being replaced by automation. Unskilled immigrants , in general, don’t create new economic growth - they do the opposite and are a net loss after taxes are considered. That wasn’t the case in the 1920’s - we didn’t have food stamps, public housing, Medicaid and the rest of the expensive social safety net. The 1920’s had lot of unskilled jobs too.
Skilled workers are the opposite, they are an immediate net positive, and as you correctly identify can be in a wide variety of useful fields.