Unexpected consequences of Obamacare and immigration amnesties

I'm not sure why this hasn't generated more outrage yet: the Washington Times has spotted that President Obama's plan to legalize employment for illegal immigrants might screw over American workers even more than initially suspected:

President Obama's temporary amnesty, which lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare's health exchanges.

Seems sensible enough, although the amnesty beneficiaries might well be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit if they have kids. But there's a consequence for the lack of health exchange rights:

Under the Affordable Care Act, that means businesses who hire them won't have to pay a penalty for not providing them health coverage [my emphasis] — making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar native-born worker, whom the business by law would have to cover.

Oopsie. Since the immigrants will tend to participate in the lower-paid end of the employment spectrum, that means the $3000 delta will be a huge fraction of the wage. That's quite the competitive advantage. Sure, it means in practice that they won't have ACA-compliant health care - and in fact I'd expect many employers to pay their amnestied workers a higher headline wage to compensate for this lack of employer-supported healthcare. Nevertheless, once it's legal to employ these workers openly, the wage differential makes them look very attractive.

This won't affect unionized jobs where wages can't easily be varied, but in the private sector the medium-sized businesses who have more than 50 employees will start sucking up all the amnestied labor they can and will stop hiring the locals. Small businesses which have pushed workers into part-time slots to avoid the ACA can now replace two part-time workers with a full-time amnestied worker.

This is what happens when you create a baroque, complicated legal framework for employment and health insurance. When you subsequently make changes, you will find that they have unexpected effects.