What is it good for?
Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of immigration laws isn't population control. It's white supremacist social engineering.
If it were truly about population control, it'd be completely indiscriminate. “The United States can only accept 29.4 million immigrants this year”—it’d be a sliding number, based on birth rate, death rate, and how effectively we can absorb that population—“and the requirements are you can't be a felon, need to get by in English, and need to get a job and residence within the first month.” And other reasonable things. Special accommodations for special cases, like refugees. Stuff absolutely anyone can do—again, special accommodations for special cases, like elderly parents immigrating with their kids, who are too senile to learn English or too disabled to work. But otherwise: Indiscriminate.
Thing is, the United States has always discriminated. Because our white supremacists don't want America to turn brown. They want it to remain a predominantly white, predominantly Protestant, country. Immigration mustn’t let in so many people that white Protestants become a minority; in fact, wherever possible, they hope to tip the scale further in their direction. Pity so many of the white Protestants in the world are perfectly happy staying in their homelands… although the white supremacists were able to get ahold of some white South Africans recently.
But yeah, our immigration laws are set up to keep America as white and Protestant as possible.
Always have been. American Indians weren’t welcome. Free blacks weren’t welcome. When Asians started moving to the west coast during the Gold Rush, the white supremacists—already annoyed by all the Mexicans we had to assimilate after the Mexican Cession—tried to clamp down hard on their influx. Still try to clamp down hard on Asian immigration; still plenty of white supremacists in California.
Even whites were suspect: You had to be the right whites. Meaning Protestants. Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians, Brits—all good. Irish and Italians?—Roman Catholic, so unacceptable. French?—tricky. France was a gray area ’cause we owed them big-time for the Revolution, and admired their language and food. But, y’know, Catholic. Sometimes atheist.
Jews?—also considered unacceptable, until the 1970s. No, their acceptance wasn’t because Americans repented of our white supremacy; it’s because a significant number of Protestants embraced the Darbyist view of the End Times, as taught by Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, John Hagee, and a slew of others. In their End Times timeline, in the middle of the great tribulation, all the Jews in the world will miraculously convert to Christianity. So Jews are okay!—they’re pre-Christian. Even though Jews (unless Christian, obviously) don’t believe this at all, and think Christians are heretic… and often meshuga. And bizarrely, these same white supremacist Protestants still discriminate against Muslims, even though Muslims believe in, and look forward to, Jesus’s second coming.
The anti-immigration folks claim it’s because of criminals and terrorists. And okay, these are people we certainly need to screen for. But they act like—and in Donald Trump's case, openly say—that'd be most potential immigrants. The only reason they'd want to come here is to rob, rape, murder, sell us drugs, blow up our buildings, and eat our pets. Unless they're white. They never refer to white immigrants as criminals. Although they're willing to, depending on the white person; again, still a lot of anti-Catholicism among our white supremacists.
And unless they're rich. If you're a nonwhite billionaire Trump is happy to have you. Other white supremacists won't agree, but casual racists like Trump are way more Mammonist than racist—though really that's not better. Money suggests you're an outstanding exception to your race. You're “one of the good ones”—a statement which inherently implies everyone else in your race is one of the bad ones.
So, like I said, social engineering. Those who control immigration only want “the good ones,” as they define good. They want the United States to primarily—or only—consist of white Protestants. Who aren’t poor. And if at all possible, share their politics; the very last thing they want are liberal white Protestants, who might vote for expensive government programs to help the needy, and that’s money they’d much rather spend on bombing middle eastern countries. Gotta trigger those End Times!
Birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment and upheld Tuesday by way too few of the Supreme Court justices, really bugs the white supremacists who want to filter out everyone but white Protestants. It enrages them that an immigrant, who’s only supposed to be here for work and will be kicked out once their usefulness is over; or a refugee, who’s only supposed to be here till it’s safe to send them back to their dangerous homeland (and in the case of Haitians, not even then)—or worst of all, someone who came here on vacation, or who snuck past our borders—that if these immigrants give birth, the child is automatically American. With the very same rights as they.
To their minds—and this was the argument they pitched in the recent Supreme Court case Trump v. Barbara—the 14th Amendment only applies to slaves after the Civil War. Those were the only people Abraham Lincoln and the Congress meant when they passed the amendment. Shouldn’t apply to anyone else. Even though the members of Congress at the time were fully aware this might be applied in other cases. Even though the Supreme Court has upheld birthright citizenship many times before; notably in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. They, and Trump, were hoping the activist conservatives in the court would overturn birthright citizenship, Constitution or no Constitution. And three of them would. Clarence Thomas argued U.S. v. Wong meant only the children of permanent legal aliens could have birthright citizenship; Neil Gorsuch argued it’d apply to any legal aliens; and Samuel Alito argued U.S. v. Wong should be overturned entirely.
My attitude about immigration and borders is that basic non-discriminatory sort I wrote about at the top. If they wanna come to America, and we can accommodate them, let ’em in! Immigrants make the best Americans.
But as a Christian, I do have to remind you Jesus is the king of the world, recognizes none of our borders, and once he takes over he’ll do away with them altogether. And it is foolish for us to erect something which Jesus will eventually knock down.