Isn't immigration nation the program where they showed something like 98% of those going through the legal immigration process to seek asylum being denied and sent back to get hunted down and killed by gangs waiting back home? When they could have came illegally and only had something like 5% chance a year of being caught and removed (and most likely, far less if they dont engage in non-immigration related crime)?

You know anybody in tech jobs working on contract? Did you know they don't verify I-9 for 1099 workers and B2B payments? Did you know about half of illegal immigrants have no high school diploma, yet they make roughly same as American non-high-school graduates?

AS you say California does issue driver license.

The fear of ICE for illegals who are off the record is swapped for other fears when you're legal and on the books. Like the fear I have of CBP (customs/border patrol), who actually served me a search warrant since I'm a citizen with a recorded address who goes through the legal port of entry. Last time I got tossed in a cell for 16 hours and was strip searched, put into medical debt, printed and booked, shackled and cuffed, made to perform bodily functions in front of CBP officers, taken around by prisoner transport van, even though I did nothing wrong -- all because I used the legal port of entry instead of sneaking through the desert. Citizens aren't immune to persecution by our immigration and border apparatus, and unlike illegal immigrant I don't have another nation to fall back on when my own countries immigration system turns tyrannical on citizens like me.

And it's a myth you can't be naturalized if here illegally. People get married and do it all the time.