I've noticed that the overwhelming majority of people who are vitriolic about illegal immigration are also vitriolic about welfare and unemployment, and I believe I know why.
When talking about illegal immigration, the implicit (and often explicit) argument is that for every illegal immigrant with a job, some American who wants a job can't find one. Even when the words are not so precise, the meaning is clear: some Americans will remain unemployed until we remove illegal immigrants from those positions.
This clear and direct impact on Americans must - by necessity - pit the needs of Americans against the needs of illegal immigrants. And since it is "us vs. them", we must choose "us." It is our only chance of survival.
I won't argue this perspective. For one thing, I have very little data on just how many Americans are displaced by illegal immigrants, and for another, that's not the point I'm interested in examining. In fact, for the sake of my argument, let's presume that they're right--that for every illegal immigrant with an American job, there is an American who would have a job (or a higher-paying one) but does not--and never will, if we don't do something about the illegal immigrant standing in his or her way.
If I allow myself to truly believe that argument, I can't help but get angry at illegal immigration, from the employed immigrants who are each causing direct and serious harm to one American, to the government allowing these attacks on American citizens to continue. I can't help but feel sympathy and solidarity for my fellow citizens who deserve and would have a job, if only their job wasn't being currently occupied by some dirty, low-down--HEY, waaaaaaait a second.
Why aren't the people who make the "stolen jobs" argument more sympathetic towards unemployed or underemployed Americans?
By "more sympathetic", I in some cases mean "sympathetic at all." In fact, although they seem to believe that illegal immigration has created a job shortage which leaves an appalling number of Americans either unable to find a job or unable to find one with higher pay, they seem to simultaneously believe that virtually all of the Americans who say they can't find a job are just being lazy and self-entitled.
If jobs are plentiful enough to make that assumption, one can hardly argue that illegal immigrants are putting as dire a dent in employment opportunities as they suggest. The two variables aren't a perfect inverse, but they're pretty close.
Admittedly, a handful of them connect these two apparently disparate ideas by suggesting that there are no real impediments to keep a currently unemployed (or underemployed) person from immediately creating a business which would immediately create enough income for them to survive without tax-payer assistance. Although highly unrealistic, they're at least consistent.
The vast majority of them, however, seem thoroughly unaware that the idea of illegal immigrants causing such wide-scale unemployment that we must exercise force and potential violence towards them is in direct conflict with the assumption that virtually all unemployed people could find jobs tomorrow if we'd only give them a sharp nudge by doing something as drastic as, oh say, suspending their sole source of income.
If one were to take less extreme stances, or balance out one extreme stance with a more sympathetic one, they could easily reconcile both beliefs. For instance, if only a few Americans were out of jobs due to illegal immigrants, then one could hardly use "job theft" as overwhelming evidence that illegal immigration causes major harm to the country. With one of their more compelling arguments diminished, one might suggest other less savory reasons for an apparently unreasonable level of vitriol.
Likewise, if only a few Americans were leeching off of the system, one could hardly build an argument for removing unemployment and welfare benefits for all Americans who receive it. With such a small amount of fraud and so many people affected, any passionate argument for terminating everyone would be seen as drastic and perhaps motivated by unrelated biases.
There really is no legitimate way to credit illegal immigrants with a severe negative impact to job availability while at the same time assuming that the vast majority of unemployed people could find work easily if they wanted to.
I doubt I'm the only person for whom these arguments ring false when being passionately presented by the same individual. In fact, my ultimate argument is to assert that there is a "unifying theory" to explain how this (and so many other) inconsistent arguments can exist in parallel within the same ideology.
Unlike trying to find the common link between the working models that describe our universe, this theory is much easier to describe and can be proven with consistent results by any number of methods:
They're selfish.
Quite simple, as theories go. If anyone cares to test this theory and present their findings, I'm all ears.