Caveat, I don't know much about the legal details about immigration and I don't have specific concrete solutions. But just because I know little about it doesn't mean I don't think I am an expert. 😆 so for what it's worth, here are my thoughts. I know I can be wrong and biased so here goes. I'll try to hit the highlights of a complicated issue.
It does appear that the US has lost control over it's borders. I agree that a country should determine for itself who can visit and become a citizen.
I think immigration is the lifeblood of this country. Immigration has what made us achieve greatness and immigration is vital if we want to continue to be a success. With the exception of the Native American population and the black slave population, the rest of us are fortunate to have been able to immigrate. My mother was born in Germany and became naturalized. Immigration is one of the biggest things that made America great. I think we should be doing everything in our power to continue to attract immigrants.
This does not mean open borders and anyone can come and go as they please. Seven million people sounds like a lot, but it isn't that many to all of America. My preference would be to have a controlled process that would allow pretty much everyone to come in who wants to. We need workers and immigrants are some of the hardest workers who make the most grateful future citizens. New arrivals would get a working visa or something similar. (Citizens should have a unique id card, as opposed to using driver's licenses for identification. Everyone needs driver's licenses, even non- citizens. It confuses citizenship with safety to use driver's licenses. Immigrants could get something to identify themselves that notes that they can work but aren't yet citizens. But this is an aside.)
The strategy might be different. I would build tactics around encouraging immigration and allowing people to come in, as opposed to keeping people out or kicking out people who are here. (The irony is that illegal immigrants are always arrested at work. A Mexican American comedian had a great joke. He said "you know, there are a lot of stereotypes about Mexicans that just aren't true. We aren't all hard workers!")
This strategy still implies a controlled process. It's gotten chaotic for many reasons, but it doesn't mean it's not possible to deal with. Without getting into details, some of our own foreign policies destabilized Central and South America, creating some of the chaos. Regardless of the causes, I acknowledge we have a border crisis.
I don't think there are as many criminals as Trump says. Even so, I trust our court system to deal with criminals more than ICE. The only thing that gives you and me freedom is the court system. The bill of rights is a bunch of empty words if we can't know what we are charged with, face our accuser, and defend ourselves in a court with a jury of our peers. There are way more citizens who are criminals than noncitizens. I literally had a drug house next door to me. I live in an expensive area of my town and had a family move in next door, the mom took up with an ex-con drug seller and the dad moved out. Cars and traffic all night. Two little kids in the house. We neighbors spent about a year and a half trying to get them out, working together and with the police. On one occasion towards the end, the police raided the house and were outside with AR15s while the guy was instead. I took my daughter down into the basement in case of stray bullets. I could go into a lot more details but the point is that these were citizens, and secondly, I am familiar with crime. But we can't have government enforcers going into houses and shipping people off to prisons. Using your analogy of 10% criminals and 1% on the street, let's say the government successfully grabs all 10% criminals and 1% are innocent. 1% is too much. What's more, they're not going to be that accurate. Who decides who's a criminal? They haven't been tried so who says they broke the law? A neighbor, a co-worker? And who decides what is a bad enough offense to be arrested? You know it's not going to only be for violence, it'll eventually get into thought control, as in I don't like how you talk about the people in power.
A bit of rambling, but that's sort of my perspective on immigration.
We haven't discussed the meth and Fentanyl crisis. This is something that is more of a crisis than immigration to me. The fact that China is not doing more to stop shipping the ingredients for fentanyl is more aggravating to me than that they are subsiding their industries breaking free trade agreements. I can agree with a targeted set of economic restrictions including tariffs to encourage solar generation in the USA, which has been undermined by China's subsidies for solar production in their own country.
Good question. Thanks for asking, even if you called me a "mister."
