>>40322582There have been people from Mexico coming across the border for over a hundred years. It was always US national policy to use migrant labor from Mexico to work on farms in the south and south west. The border was always one of the most porous borders in the world, as evidenced by the fact that the Mexican government couldn't keep out white slaver settlers from founding the independent state of Texas out of Mexican territory.
During WW2, migrant labor was even more officially used by the Emergency Farm Labor Program to fill labor shortages, where the Federal Government would take buses down to Mexico and ship people into the country to work on land then send them back.
It was a direct result of anti-migrant sentiment during the Reagan years (and subsequent) that many began to permanently reside in the United States, instead of going back and forth, lest they not be able to return.
The entire thing you talk about of "disproportionately benefiting the propertied class." and "fuck[ing] the lower economic strata of your own country" has been national policy this entire time. It was always the plan of the organized class to use undocumented migrant labor on their farms in the south and southwest and always has been.
Giving people legal citizenship would hamper this by not only protecting those workers, but ensuring all workers are under the same worker protection laws, undercutting the ability of the propertied class to undercut.
You're assuming that if we don't give them citizenship, they would just vanish. I'm saying, they are here because the propertied class wants them to be here in a state of limbo, and rather than fall for the divisionist lies of the propertied class, we should call their bet and give them citizenship, since they and their families have been in the united states working as laborers for over a hundred years or more.