What we consider illegal immigration now used to be legal when our country was more prosperous. Of course, the main problem with not having the current immigration legislation is our massive entitlement system. Imo the reason it was able to work before was because there wasn’t a giant, social safety net. Regardless of which side of the argument you’re on about that, economy is now too weak to shoulder the load of providing benefits for everyone AND playing world police (even though the later is now important again for national interests). Of course, it will get even worse if we don’t have replacements for working adults, and elderly retirees begin to outnumber everyone
You’re probably right on the legal side based on my quick scan of the history of US immigration. It looks like what changed is the effectiveness of enforcement which drastically gotten better in the Information Age.
