Immigrants are extremely valuable for a country like the U.S. You basically get a free adult that that another country paid to raise and educate. Even a poorly educated immigrant is a net positive on average. Of course, the best immigrants are illegal immigrants because they can be maximally exploited and can make minimal claims to the services they pay for with their taxes.
A large proportion of the people I know who fulminate about "illegal immigration" had relatives who came here under at best cattle-call circumstances, if not outright "illegal" ones themselves. A nontrivial portion of my generation's Boston Irish grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers did not necessarily have all their papers in order; it's just far enough back to somehow legitimate it.
Also, they're white, and that plays a role--even today there's a surprising number of undocumented Irish immigrants to the United States but nobody's out there asking for reactionary measures to that.
It's not always racism...but it is mostly ladder-pulling, and economically unrealistic ladder-pulling at that. (Ask a farmer.)
That's what shows up on the surface, but go down the rabbit hole. *Why* do they care? Is it really just a moral stand on right/wrong? I doubt that given how few Americans live a 100% law abiding life.
Or is it that they feel those immigrants are unfairly taking something from them? And if so, is that really true or just FUD?
How much of the sentiment boils down to "those illegals are taking our jobs!"? How many people who hold that sentiment would actually want & take the job being filled by one of those immigrants? If their argument is instead that the illegal immigrant labor depresses wages for that set of jobs, how many of those people are willing to pay the extra cost for the products once the company paid fair market wages?
It's a pretty massive resource and logistical problem. Plus, having very little ability of being able to filter who comes in the country is pretty dangerous.
> It's a pretty massive resource and logistical problem.
What resource and logistical problem? The US isn't a command economy, and it's not a social welfare state that extends its largess to anyone within its borders that has a pulse.
Immigrants, legal or otherwise, have to earn their keep, same as everyone else. And there are no natural shortages of... Anything in the US.
