I just heard John Kasich making the frequently repeated claim that migrants coming into the United States aren’t committing a crime. He’s either mistaken or it depends on your definition of “crime”. Anyone entering the United States is required by federal law to present him- or herself to a duly appointed federal official to ensure that the entry is in order. Failing to do so is a misdemeanor. Repeated infractions may be a felony.
That’s the reason I question another frequently heard assertion: that illegal immigrants are otherwise law-abiding people. The one thing that all illegal immigrants have in common is that they have demonstrated the willingness to break U. S. law if it gets in the way of what they want to do. That doesn’t prove that all illegal immigrants are career criminals but it isn’t exactly evidence in their favor, either. We don’t have much basis for making the determination that illegal immigrants are (other than the obvious) law-abiding.
Many people seem to think that breaking our immigration laws is benign, that doing so is not intrinsically wrong. They’re mistaken, too. Like many other forms of fraud or theft it is taking something that does not belong to them, specifically the right to determine who comes into the country and who doesn’t.
That would be excusable if most migrants were starving or in fear for their lives but the statistics just don’t support that. Most are looking for a raise which is not a justifiable reason for breaking the law.
Everything you said in this post is even more applicable to the people that hire them once they’re here.