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OK, and how exactly do you think US citizens come about to have foreign family? Again, think it through. These US citizens are almost universally downstream of some relatively recent immigration event. They either became naturalized citizens, or were born to immigrants. People who were born to two American-born parents are highly unlikely to have any foreign family that they could even consider getting in here.
So, basically all family based immigration is downstream of recent immigration. If you ignore the family based legal immigration, then legal immigration has been absolutely overwhelmed by illegal immigration for many years now.
What I am arguing here is that large chunk, if not a majority of legal family based immigration is downstream of some illegal immigration event that happened in recent history. For example, US citizen born to illegal parents, or formerly illegal aliens who legalized their presence in some way (and there are ways to do it for quite a lot of people).
Therefore, when you say that
You are missing the forest for trees: yes, family based chain migration have brought more people here than fake asylum claimants, but the point is that fake asylum claimants will cause more family based migration in future, so reducing the former also reduces the latter.
You missed one option, that is, they marry illegal immigrants, but otherwise this my point: all family based immigration is downstream of previous immigration events.
This is only true in the most literal sense, as illegal immigrants are not eligible for petitioning for family based immigration, but overall it misses my point: US citizens can and do petition for family based immigration for their illegally present parents, spouses, and siblings. There is a whole legal industry for that, just search Google for “green card for undocumented parents”, you’ll find many immigration law companies adveritising their services. If your spouse, parent or sibling did not enter unlawfully, but eg. overstayed their visa, there is hardly any legal issue preventing adjusting their status. Even if you entered unlawfully, all you need to do is sneak out of US, and then pretend you’ve never been here illegally; perfectly viable for many illegals who haven’t generated federal record of their presence.
Sorry, do you actually believe that people who enter or stay illegally are a complete dead end from family based immigration purposes, or are you just asking for evidence this to be obnoxious? The existence of the legal industry dedicated to legalizing parents and spouses is evidence. You can find many businesses that help with that in Google.
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