Originally Posted by Demise

Well there's 2 problems here:

1. You are approaching this rationally.
2. Border is honestly a money sinkhole.

You grew up in US, were educated in US schools, speak English, and know more about US history than on the low end 70% of Americans? The rational thing would be to just naturalize you and let you carry on with your life. Same thing with someone who's been in US illegally for an extended period of time, oh you were paying taxes, keeping your nose clean, etc, similarly at that point it'd make more sense just to keep such a person, maybe pay a fine, maybe get a petition from your job. Similarly you shouldn't be forced to content with a 10 year exile when you try to fix your status, humans don't live long enough to twiddle their thumbs for 10 years.

The problem however is that republicans aren't rational. They need someone to bitch and moan about to rile up hillbilly voting base. Immigrants are just the most convenient one since you can't vote. Never mind that decent chunk are asylum seekers who are here legally and larger part are overstayers so having CBP hire more Cletuses wouldn't make any difference. They could encase the whole country in a glass sphere and launch it into space and they'd still bitch and moan that the border isn't secure.