Well, I’m from New Jersey in a tiny 50/50 Italian/irish blue collar suburb next to a lillywhite wealthier town on one side and a city with various ethnic enclaves on the other. Every kind of Eastern European had their own church in that town and their own streets ,every kind of south and central american spanish with their own, etc and some great ethnic food of course.
To be straight, Elizabeth, New Jersey was the bigger city nearby where I grew up. A port town, so immigrants were relatively commonplace, from 1st to 10th generation. back to Colonial America.
So the notion of immigrants is just a normal thing in general.
Flash forward to where I got a house now: I live in the woods not far from a city whose ONLY claim is FARMS, with lots of migrant workers, many undocumented.
For many it’s a path to citizenship. A number of previously white-owned farms – quite a number – have been bought out by the GRANDKIDS of prior “illegal immigrants” and run like co-ops now. A solid path to citizenship.
They pay their taxes (I can back with numbers) and the State of Florida needs them as tourism and real-estate alone still won’t cut it.
companies use them because the going rate is 75% of a legal worker.
So if a documented worker gets $7/hr, an undocumented worker gets $5 – and again, they pay federal income taxes on it, partially because they tend to believe that if they do everything right, they might get a path to citizenship a little faster. The IRS happily issues them a number and doesn’t care about immigration issues so long as workers who are working and getting paid pay the taxes they should.
So, that’s my background.
As I’ve never lived in a border state, I have no answer to the problems of texas, cali, etc.
My only experience is with hard working undocumented workers who drive very safely and try really hard to stay out of trouble.