That is a lie. Exactly what period was this? What did the immigration laws in place actually say? Our nation has never embraced the kind of open borders policy for anyone and everyone throughout the world who wanted to come here. All sorts of restrictions have applied depending on the number of individuals and the country of origin. They didn't allow the same kind of mass scale immigration out of Asia that they allowed out of Europe during the time of Ellis Island for example. This pragmatic approach has its basis in the philosophy of our Founding Fathers. Even they realized that immigration needs to be undertaken with practical approach based on a combination of economic, social, and cultural factors that produces an ideal process of assimilation. They understood that balkanization was a very real danger and had to be avoided at all costs.
Employers are always crying for more workers. But they are simply looking for foreign born workers that simply do the same job for less money than their native born counterparts. This has served to displace our own qualified native born workforce.
Also, many of the industries would be far better off mechanizing/automating their approach to production rather than simply opening the floodgates and allowing more cheap labor to flood the workforce. Agriculture is a case in point. Aggribusinesses have always screamed that they need more and more migrants. But even now with all the migrant workers many of our growers have discovered that there are foreign countries that can produce the same produce for less money, -even with tariffs imposed on their exports to the U.S.. Brazil can sell oranges just as cheaply as our Florida growers can, and that is with a 20 % tariff slapped on their product. Florida growers now realize that their only recourse is to fully mechanize their approach to farming if they want to "remain in the game". We should have been forcing our agriculture industry to mechanize all along rather than allowing them to become complacent and rely on illegals to do everything.
Also, the issue of "economics" works both ways withregards ot immigration. With 6 billion plus people living on this planet and over 60 % of them living at are below the poverty line there will always be an economic impetus for individuals to try and migrate to this country even if it means doing it illegally and working for a lower wage than what an employer is paying his current employees.
"That is a lie. "
My understanding is that prior to the late 1800s, one need only come to America and fill out a form. I believe we did essentially have open borders then. I don't advocate this today.
What's clear is that no one here really wants to discuss this. You and so many others are just knee jerkers when it comes to this topic. I take issue with Sowell, and the first thing out of so many poster's is crap like (paraphrasing here) "you're just like Michael Moore" or "you're a liar." Moreover, I don't think anyone recognized that my Prohibition analogy was not aimed at saying illegal immigration was exactly like illegal drinking. The point was that they both represent attempts to use pragmatic legislation to solve a problem with lawbreaking.
Reasonable people can disagree on this issue. Where are the reasonable people around here?