Oh but they were. It just wasn't called "welfare" it was called charity. Then there were the "poor houses" and "work houses". The Irish were violent, drank to excess and spoke funny. They fought. They were territorial. South Boston still has this reputation.
The Irish immigrants formed "gangs". These gangs were involved in theft rings, murder for hire and protection rackets. No one felt safe going into their neighborhoods to, using your phrase, "buy groceries".
Facts don't change. The Law of Supply and Demand is immutable and will not bend to your fantasy. You can raise the costs associated with labor migration but, just as with any other commodity, it will find a new level. You might as well fight the ocean.
Open revolt? Ha!
Economics is the overriding influence. I'm constantly amazed that the children of capitalism continually fail to recognise that fact. At least the Founders did.
Everything mankind does is influenced by scarcity and abundance. The system works well until some entity, be it government, religion or an abstract group, tries to artifically control access. Left to its own devices, "the invisible hand" will find a balance.
btw, I can read unbolded text just fine, thank you very much.
We have a very generous legal immigration system to offset a stagnant population, and if need be we can increase mechanization in many sectors of the economy, including agriculture.
Those who want massive illegal immigration are either naive or are profiting somehow off of the cheap, compliant labor they're pushing onto us. And we are not fooled in the least by the Wall St. Journal/open borders rhetoric of doom and gloom if the borders are closed.