I’ll paraphrase the Victor Davis Hanson article:
1) Mexico and Central America
Mexico would have to resign itself to far fewer remittances ($35 billion per year to Mexico, another $30 billion to other Central American countries), potentially greater social unrest (Their social services are not equitable, fair or generous versus the U.S. where the illegal immigrants get subsidized housing, medical care, food, education, etc – paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Ending illegal immigration could cause a revolution in Mexico. ), landmark social reform at home (Mexico has no constitution and discriminates against indigenous people) , and less traction with the American government.
2) Business
Expect employers to resent bitterly true immigration reform that would halt the influx of cheap labor. In every “grand bargain,” there will be a Republican shilling for big business. Meat packing plants, Agriculture, Hospitality, landscaping all want cheap labor.
3) The elite
In the elite mind, there is no contradiction between hiring Roberto to build a redwood fence in the backyard, and ensuring that one’s own kids go to private schools to avoid joining Roberto’s kids in the neighborhood school .
4) La Raza.
Does any other identity group adopt the nomenclature “The Race”?
With the end of illegal immigration, in a generation or two the very word La Raza or Chicano would disappear from the American parlance, buried under the juggernaut of assimilation, intermarriage, and integration. The presence of 11 million illegal aliens — largely from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the majority non-English-speaking and without high-school educations — warps all civic statistics about the upward mobility of Latinos. Only the influx of millions of illegal aliens replenishes the unassimilated ethnic pool and thereby ensures through the ensuing disparities that the Latino caucus, the Chicano Studies Department, and the accented name of the evening newsreader do not go the way of Italian-, Armenian-, or Greek-American assimilation.
5) The Democratic party. California, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico have flipped from red to blue. 550 cities in the U.S. are immune from federal immigration law (aka sanctuary cities). The Democrats have resurrected the Confederate idea of nullification whereby a local jurisdiction can nullify a federal law.
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My opinion is that
To stop the illegal immigration over the long term, it would be necessary to change election laws at the federal level and disallow any questionable ballots. The federal government would also need to grant itself the ability to investigate and enforce those laws. It would cost billions to standardize election ballots and make them auditable, but illegal immigration is costing tens of billions. The opportunity to do this existed in 2017-8 when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency, but they failed to tighten election laws at that time. Studies have shown that stricter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters. Some believe that this disproportionate burden is indicative of racist sentiments, and absentee voting can facilitate more equitable civic engagement. I believe that as long as the law is applied equally to everyone, it is not racist. “More equitable civic engagement” is just an excuse to enable fraud on the part of minority voters and to allow the Democratic party to turn states from red to blue. Donald Trump has charged that absentee voting is rife with fraud, but when he could have changed it in 2017-18, he did nothing. COVID-19 caused a huge increase in mail-in ballots in the 2020 elections. The RNC has brought lawsuits in Mississippi and North Dakota about absentee ballots, so we’ll see where that goes.