Myths of illegal immigration
The typical rightist tends to complain about illegal immigration, instead praising legal immigration. Yet, the arguments he typically uses to support legal over illegal immigration tend to be incredibly weak. Let us examine the arguments.
First, the rightist claims that illegal immigration lowers wages. In fact, any effect of this for native-born workers is marginal, and any effect of this would be equivalent to higher fertility among the lower-skilled, which the rightist generally tends to support (thus his opposition to abortion). The reasons for the marginality of this effect are twofold. Firstly, illegal immigrants tend not to take the same jobs as Americans -in fact, legal immigrants would be more likely to compete for the jobs of native born workers. Illegal alien labor is thus complementary to Americans' at least as much as competitive -and labor that is complementary, rather than competitive, increases native-born Americans’ real wages. Also, far more obviously, in a dynamic capitalist economy, capital tends to expand quickly when population expands -we do not live in a Malthusian world. America had economic troubles in the 1970s in the aftermath of the baby boom, but Amerosclerosis was no worse than Eurosclerosis, despite the Europeans having much weaker fertility rates.
Secondly, there is the argument that illegal aliens increase strain on public services while not paying much in taxes. But that is an argument for skilled immigration (which has its own problems), not merely legal immigration in place of illegal. The effect of illegal aliens paying less in taxes than legal ones is fully counterbalanced by the fact legal immigrants are eligible for public benefits, illegal aliens are, with the exception of some states, not.
The third rightist argument is “you can’t have tens of thousands of people coming in without vetting”, presumably due to foreigners’ greater likelihood of criminal behavior. But this is, in fact, exactly how the European Union works, and yet, Germany has hardly experienced any serious damage from the project. Much the same goes for the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Yes; Mexico is, indeed, a very high-crime country, unlike any in Eastern Europe (and even unlike Puerto Rico), thus making this rightist argument slightly more legitimate on the surface. Yet, the cities of Texas, Arizona, and California, despite being flooded with illegal aliens, are simply not crime-ridden hellholes like Detroit, Camden, or St. Louis. What few studies exist on the matter find illegal aliens (in America, mostly from Mexico and Central America) are (likely due to their desire to avoid getting caught) no more crime-prone than native born Americans or even legal immigrants.
In conclusion, illegal aliens are unlikely to reduce real wages for native-born americans, do not burden public services more than legal aliens of similar regions and backgrounds, and are not more prone to crime than either native-born Americans or legal aliens. There are other reasons to oppose illegal immigration -but I won’t mention them here.