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Notes -
My experience of the children of illegals has been mostly very negative, as you note, but I’ve never personally met a first gen illegal who didn’t seem selected for being harder working and more ambitious than the norm wherever he came from. I’ve definitely heard illegals stereotyping centracos(from south of Mexico) as worse immigrants(lazier, more criminally inclined, that sort of thing) than Mexicans, but I don’t know how much of that is just ‘the next village over is our ancient enemy’ brought across international borders. I’m sure that there are plenty of immigrants who are bad people that I would not want to live around, but that has not been my dominant experience.
On reflection, I’ll happily retract the bit about Mexico not sending their best. You might very well be right that they by and large are. But due to America’s birthright citizenship, I’m not only or even primarily concerned with the generation that illegally immigrates. I’m more concerned with their offspring: Are they net users of welfare? Do they advocate the same deleterious socialist policies that helped to ruin their fatherlands? Do they push for divisive race-, ethnicity-, or gender-based programs such as DEI, affirmative action, etc? Do they vote to even further loosen our border, both de jure and de facto? Do they commit crimes at a higher rate than their Anglo neighbors (controlling for income)? As far as I can tell, the answers are yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. So the overall impact of illegal immigration is negative, even if the first generation that comes here is actually okay.
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