First, The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions. Inviting your cousin to stay with you for a couple of days can drag into months, or, feeding the stray cat at your back door can lead several years later to wondering why there are fifty or so cats in your living room, and your neighbors are getting worried. Allowing illegal aliens free access to your country and health benefits is an attraction that draws a crowd, and after a few years, becomes a problem.
Second, allowing ILLEGAL aliens establishes a wage and benefits floor for the economy at large — of zero. It drags down the wages and benefits for everybody except the very top of the wage scale, since major employers can hire illegals and pay them next to nothing, and not pay the social security or taxes required of legal workers.
Third, illegal workers are here in our country because the economic and living conditions are better than in their country. They are not in their home country making their home country’s laws conducive to making their home country’s economic and living conditions better. Our economy and living conditions are primarily the effect of our constitution and legal system (The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto), and if the illegal aliens are here changing our laws, they are not in their home countries changing their own laws to make their country better. There develops a positive feedback relationship,(which, despite the name, is bad) where our laws become more flexible to accommodate this immigration problem, while their home country’s laws and society become less flexible and more restrictive in the other direction.
Fourth, talking about the “Illegal Immigration” problem in the abstract allows illegal immigrants to dissimulate, and think about themselves in an abstract category. They need to be told up front that they are committing an illegal act, and they should stop it and go home.
That last should be done for most illegal acts. Talking in generalities allows most criminals to justify their own actions, or make excuses and rationalities about why they did what they did, or, if they are somewhat removed from reality, to convince themselves that what their body did was driven by “somebody else”. They, themselves, would not have done that. The public discussion needs to be much more focused and directed that the criminal is committing an illegal act that hurts others and hurts society, and they should stop it. To illegal aliens: while you are here, you are committing an illegal act. Stop it. Go home, and if the economic and living conditions in your home are not good, work to change them there, so that tomorrow will be a better day in your home country.