Yes. They are. The very fact that you had such a flood of people coming across the border from 2021-2024, were given asylum and funding to remain in the US means democrats are supporting them at the expense of citizens.

How much of an unprecedented "flood" the post-covid rise in border encounters (and subsequent bump in expulsions) actually was is debatable, and it was Republicans who blocked a bill to fund expanded border security.

More importantly, the claim that immigration (illegal or otherwise) is at the expense of citizens is at the very least highly debatable, and not what most economists think. E.g. here's Paul Krugman:

> Until the 1990s many economists, myself included, believed that immigrants with limited formal education were substituting for native-born workers. As a consequence, we thought that immigrants would put downward pressure on the wages of less educated native-born workers. Most of us changed our minds in the face of evidence that immigrants were taking very different jobs from native-born workers with similar education. This meant that they were complements, not substitutes, even for low-education native-born workers, and probably raised their wages. For example, more immigrants to pick fruits and vegetables translates into lower food prices and higher real wages for native-born workers.

That is not to say that Americans must accept illegal immigration or even legal immigration, but the claim that it's at their expense is far from established.

True, but to be fair the stream didn't start in 2021.

The country isn't like a life boat stranded at sea where we have to ration our resources and rescuing another survivor is choice to run out of supplies faster. This way of thinking needs to die.

Immigration - legal and illegal - high skill and low skill - are net positives to the economy and even our social safety-net programs. American citizens come out way on top in this whole deal by far.

And if you think giving immigrants a few bucks to get started is expensive, it's a pittance next to the costs of mass detention and deportation. They increased ICE's budget by 15x and it's now the most well funded law enforcement agency in the world.

It's true that border crossings surged in the Biden years. The apprehension rate however, was the same as Trump's. The vast majority of illegal border crossings end up in ejection or deportation. Over the whole 4 year term I think we have something around 2.5 million people who were actually released into the country while their cases go through the immigration courts.

And there's some research out there that suggests the immigration surge helped stave off a post-covid recession and softened inflation relative to the rest of the world

Now under Trump, we're projected to have the yearly first decline in population in ages.