The single biggest reason why any initiative will fail is that there are differing assumptions.
One side assumes that you can hunt down and find all 12 million (or more) and the other side assumes that charging a $9,000 or more fine isn’t immediate legal status.
“and the other side assumes that charging a $9,000 or more fine isn’t immediate legal status.”
Even worse, they assume 12 million often dirt poor illegals will even bother to attempt to pay that amount. So now you have 12 million non-citizens given amnesty who become a slave nation. Oh yeah, that’s smart.