Most of the illegal immigrants are travelers who overstay their visas often with little funds or connections. It hasn't caused society to break down or become an unmanageable problem. In fact it is so unnoticeable that most people don't even know the extent of it.
But yet refugees, the people who need help the most, are singled out as being a potential threat to society.
It's why China is so afraid of destabilizing or allowing North Korea to collapse. Refugee waves have caused immense problems pouring out of Venezuela (and into other poor or semi-poor bordering nations completely unable to deal with it). Countries like Jordan, Ethiopia and Lebanon have had vast refugee problems that have overwhelmed them very substantially.
In fact, if you go down the list of countries with the most refugees, they're all countries that are among the least equipped financially to handle it: Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Uganda, Chad.
Turkey has taken in perhaps two million refugees in just the last six years. They have a median income around 1/5th to 1/7th that of Canada or the US. They're completely unable to absorb that many refugees. Lebanon has 200+ refugees per 1,000 citizens currently, the notion that that isn't a problem is absurd, it's the very definition of overwhelmed.
It's anything but ridiculous, it's a not uncommon history of refugee waves spanning thousands of years.
Are there numbers for this compared to border hoppers?
1. Do these people have any knowledge of history? Both Canada and the USA have sustained far, far, far higher rates of immigration than what we're seeing from Syria and prospered mightily because of it. In the 70s Canada was happily letting in a quarter million people a year. (At the time the US was also practically giving away citizenship.) These immigrants, mostly from Asia, contributed enormously to North America's wealth and stability. And this is not a new pattern. We see the same thing over and over. Which makes you wonder -- has there ever been a case where immigrants "overwhelmed" a nation state?
2. To that end, just consider the numbers, even for a moment. We're talking about thousands in a nation of 35 million. And yet somehow these individuals -- poor, isolated, without knowing the language, and isolated from their own families -- pose a security threat.
3. Most importantly at the end of the day basic common sense indicates that immigration is almost an economic positive for the host country. Even if you suspect that you're not getting the best and the brightest from another country what you are getting are individuals often in their prime earning years where some other country has paid to raise them up until this point. The economics here are pretty clear but nobody likes to talk about it. (For example, take a look at Britain. Brexit or no, Britain will need to import millions of laborers over the next decade or, frankly, it will go broke.)
I always bring this up because the language around immigration is so far-fetched, so disconnected from reality and history, but it also never changes, in fact few things are so predictable.