I've been saying "NO AMNESTY for ILLEGALS" for a long time... But I'll modify that;
Any family, even those who came in illegally, that has sons or daughters that will enlist in the military (Obviously this takes a waiver), and complete their enlistment contract satisfactorily, gets 'probationary amnesty' upon enlistment; Once the contract is completed, they get full amnesty and 'go to the head of the line' for Citizenship.
And of course for 99% of us, this debate is not about LEGAL immigrants of any kind or 'hispanics', or anything based upon racism.
It is mostly about not wanting people who leave a society / culture because it is incompetent, corrupt and lacks economic opportunity, coming here and trying to replace our successlful culture with the one that they left.
You are partly correct, but it is about more than just that. It is also a question of economics, and how the influx of workers is effecting wage scales and such. Labor cost functions like anything else, by the laws of supply and demand. When the supply of labor exceeds demand, the price of labor declines. When demand approaches or exceeds the level of supply, employers have to compete to get people to come work for them, by offering better wages and benefits. This competition for labor is being stunted by immigration levels, both legal and illegal.
Our economy is cooking, but most Americans do not really feel like it is, and many think we are in a recession. Why? Because the economic boom we are experiencing is making corporations and stockholders happy, but the working class is seeing paychecks which do not increase enough to pay for your gas to work.
Since when is our dependance upon immigration a given? What IS the top end on immigration into this country? What population do we have to get to before we say we do not need MORE people to come here? 500 million? 1 billion? 5 billion? IS there any top population figure? I want immigration FROZEN, and I do not care what race or nationality the immigrants are. The nationality I place first is American, and I pay my government to do the same.