> And that worked out excellently for the US.

That worked out excellently for the US at a time when the US was more or less empty and the west had to be settled and the government was going out of its way to encourage people to come and tame the land. Unsurprisingly, centuries later the situation has changed significantly and it's now in our best interest to be slightly more selective and organized when it comes to bringing people into the country.

Regulating immigration is only going to get more important as more Americans are forced to move due to climate change/water shortages/desertification (already starting, about to get much much worse: https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/features/americans-m...) and as the country does its part to help accommodate the 1 billion climate refugees who won't be looking to immigrate because they want more money or better jobs, but because they literally won't have homes to go back to.

We need to be preparing ourselves for some hard times, being much more careful about the number of people we let in, giving more thought about where we're putting them all, and making sure that we're enabling them to be successful after their arrival. Regulating immigration is important. It can be done without being as evil and heartless as possible. It's important that we don't let the cruelty of the current administration cause a backlash which leads us away from common sense.

>Most of our ancestors didn't have to do anything to come here except just show up

my ancestors were war-refugees that were given asylum officially from the U.S. on my mothers side due to the atrocities committed by their former state, and my father's side had literally hundreds of members associated closely with the Western Expansion of the U.S.

To say they just showed up is so incredibly naive, and IMO it does a lot to paint the picture of current immigrants shallowly and without impact.

These people before us built this country.

These new people didn't 'just show up', either.

I had dozens of family members that used to work in the construction industry. It was a path to the middle class. Instead, most of them had to retire early in poverty.

Though it’s local, it’s similar to outsourcing to another country. Something that is decried often here, when it affects us rather than someone else.

> I personally didn't give a rats ass how someone came to be in the US. I'm much more interested in whether they are assaulting and/or stealing from people.

Okay, so you want selective enforcement [1] of laws?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

> The point still stands that people who committed "illegal entry" are the backbone of our society.

If the "backbone of our society" is a heavily exploited and abused underclass of people being just a step above slave labor then I think this system needs to be changed rather than preserved. The sooner our society is forced to improve itself the more secure our nation and our food supply will be.

Visas are quite scarce for poor people, across the world.