"While "legal entry" is true of immigration to America in the modern era, it doesn't appear to be true during the frontier era and earlier"
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Were there any immigration laws during the frontier era to violate? And if so, what were those laws and who violated them?
I was addressing the notion that there was never open immigration.
For someone to say that they base their free entry on a time when open immigration existed is not an argument without historical basis.
There was such a time.
I expect -- and I don't have the proof of it yet -- that there was a hazy period between the "open immigration era" and the "immigration law" era in which a lot of immigration took place that wasn't exactly legal.
These are observations. About me, you should know that I want a high tech fence, the Border Patrol redesignated as the National Guard, and the NG all called the Reserve. I would put that new NG on the border in the same way as I put the Coast Guard on the sea (border) coast. I would employ stiff criminal penalties against employers of illegals, and I would return illegals to their country of origin.