Industrialization and Immigration

In the eighteen hundreds, America started to industrialize itself, by building more and more factories. Work was hard and dangerous. Now in 2008, many immigrants are doing jobs that require the same amount of work, and possibly the same amount of danger? Is this fair? You decide.
When the amount of factories started to grow, so did the number of job possibilities. Immigrants like the Irish and the Italian coming over to America for better job opportunities saw these openings and took them without any hesitation. As did women, whose only job before this time was to stay at home and take care of their house and children. When the time finally came for immigrants and women to work, their jobs were exceptionally difficult. They worked long, almost twelve-hour days, with little breaks. They were paid very little, and were put in unsafe situations that at any point could take their lives. Immigrants worked in almost any kind of work area, which could include moving, lifting, or working heavy and unstable machinery, (a death sentence for their fingers and/or hands, arms, etc.). Women were most popularly place in textile factories, where they spun and made fabric. This was dangerous because their fingers could be in danger, and there were many harmful particles of fabric floating around in the air that they could inhale at any moment. Taking one day off at work meant being fired, and the low pay put people in to a depression.
At one point, people were making so little money, that they had their children start working. At the age of twelve or thirteen, children would drop out of school and face the same job hardships their parents did, just to put bread on the table. Some children lost lives because of the extreme dangers they were put in. Limbs were lost, and immune systems were shattered. Some children were actually hired to go inside of the machinery if it stopped working, to see what the problem was. Sometimes, the machinery would start back up with the children inside (this is the part where you thank God you were born in the twenty-first century!). The life of a factory worker was hard, and did not always support the employee.
Now in 2008, illegal immigrants from all around the world are doing these same dangerous jobs for low wages. Hard labor is one of the main things these people do for the smallest bit of money. Intricate construction jobs put these aliens in danger, especially because they have no benefits or opportunities to insurance. If one of them gets hurt, they cannot afford to go to a hospital, and do not do so anyway in fear of being caught. They cannot argue with their pay either, because getting the police involved would mean being deported. Some people believe that this is extremely unfair, and that immigrants should be treated better. It is believed that this sort of discrimination is the main reason for all the racism in America. Is this true? Or, did they bring this upon themselves for coming to the United States illegally? It is clearly against the law, but should these illegal immigrants be handed better jobs because of the fact that discrimination is also wrong? Or should we treat them with a more iron fist, and not employ them at all, so that they go back to where they come from? What do you think?