It's selective enforcement, stupid

John Derbyshire spells it out for those who want to paint secure border supporters as "anti-immigrant" bigots:

The U.S.A. has an immigration system, under laws passed by the people's representatives in Congress. For twenty years the federal government, for reasons to do with ideology and "interest," has failed to enforce those laws. As a result, tens of millions of foreigners have settled in our country unlawfully, while other foreigners who wish to settle here but respect our laws, wait long years in their home countries for permission to enter.

A great many Americans are very angry about this. If you were to poll those angry Americans on the topic of legal immigration, you'd get all sorts of answers, from severe-restrictionist to couldn't-care-less. The center of gravity of the answers would probably be somewhere like: "Sure we should have immigrants, but it should be done legally, properly."

The anger, the shouting, the jammed Congressional switchboards, the cable-news bloviating, is about the federal government's failure to enforce federal law. To glibly dismiss it all as "anti-immigrant" is gross propagandistic distortion...

Suppose someone had figured out a way to game the Social Security system, so that people who were not entitled to Social Security checks could get them. And suppose the federal government did nothing about this. And suppose their doing nothing about it made some fair-sized segment of the electorate mad as hell. Would those people be "anti-Social-Security"?

Exactly.