[T]he old matrix of how we were to understand illegal immigration is extinct. The concept of a largely white privileged class exploiting poor immigrants who simply wished to be a part of the American dream is now fossilized — dead and buried by new realities: the sheer millions of those entering the U.S. illegally, the cynicism and connivance of the Mexican government, the outflow of nearly $30-40 billion in remittances to Latin America, the rise of the multicultural salad bowl in lieu of the multiracial melting pot, the illiberal nature of the advocacy for open borders, and the rise of a new tribalism and ethnic solidarity on the part of the immigrant community.

For the last half-century, the subtext of illegal immigration was racial prejudice — how a hard-working minority struggled against a largely white overlord class for social justice, best emblemized by Caesar Chavez and the farmer worker rights movement. Those divides are now largely gone — or at least have become so problematic and complex to have been rendered irrelevant.

. . . . [I]llegal immigration has transmogrified into one of the most illiberal, reactionary phenomena on the current American scene, an ossified concept of racial solidarity and tribalism that attempts to privilege one group, solely on the basis of race or ethnic fides, in its exemption from federal law, and in a manner that would never be extended to other immigrant lobbies, with less numbers, influence, and potential electoral power. We have come full circle back to the 1920s when immigration was likewise largely seen through racial lenses — when one’s race determined how one navigated immigration law.

— Victor Davis Hanson, “The Philosophies of Illegal Immigration”, Pajamas Media