The immigration issue is going to be a continuing problem because of the country’s declining birth rate. Without substantial immigration, U.S. economy is going to stagnate/decline. We have easily absorbed millions of immigrants for just that reason. There are people in business who argue that the U.S. is underpopulated to compete with the E.U. and China; that the population should be much closer to 400 million. Now, it would be easy to attract that many people by simultaneously opening up our legal immigration channels to somewhat match demand while making it tougher for illegal immigrants to find work.
Unfortunately, that would be extremely unpopular with roughly 25% of the population. These people, mostly rural folks, want to restrict even legal immigration, mostly for cultural reasons. They’d prefer we attract Trump’s mythical Norwegians. But because our system isn’t particularly democratic, they wield outsize power, especially when it comes to immigration policy.
So what we have done is to create a black market in immigration and now we’ve launched the equivalent of prohibition or the War on Drugs on immigrants. I believe it’s not going to work in a million years and is going to get waaay uglier than it is now.