Wrong. They are both sides of the same coin. We are importing 1.1 million legal permanent immigrants a year along with 640,000 guest workers annually. Since 1990 35 million legal permanent immigrants have entered this country. We have just had three of the four largest decades of immigration in our history. Why are we importing so much foreign labor legally at a time when we have the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years? Legal immigrants use the welfare system to a much greater degree than the native born.
Illegal immigrants present the same kinds of problems. They are competing against Americans for scarce jobs. They are depressing wages. They are using the welfare system mainly thru the 300,000 anchor babies born annually to illegal aliens. Birthright citizenship makes them US citizens eligible for Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, etc.
The impact of legal and illegal immigration must be seen as a whole.
Most thinking people are not against immigration, but ARE against two things:
I would add a third. We must reduce legal immigration substantially to protect American citizens and their jobs and their social safety net. Government data collected in December 2014 show 18 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the United States who arrived in January 2000 or later. But only 9.3 million jobs were added over this time period. In addition, the native-born population 16 and older grew by 25.2 million. Because job growth has not come close to matching immigration and population growth, the share of Americans in the labor force has declined dramatically — a clear indication there is no labor shortage.
I disagree that they are both sides of the same coin. They are not.
I agree that the problems with legals and illegals share a similarity because the legal immigration has been artificially shaped to mirror as closely as possible illegal immigration, they are are different as a self inflicted bullet to the brain and a cancer that kills.
Both have a same end result, but are in no way philosophically, ethically, or morally the same, and I think that makes all the difference in the world. Just my opinion.