How is this immigration policy "conservative"?

My colleague Steve Camarota looked at the latest Census Bureau data and found that as of the end of last year, there were 61 million immigrants and their young children in the United States, accounting for one out of five people living in the country. (Including the young children is a way of getting at the share of immigrant families in the overall population.) Despite politicians’ constant emphasis on illegality, three-quarters of the total are legal immigrants and their young children.

This is a sharp break from the past; as recently as 1970, there were only 13.5 million immigrants and their young kids here, accounting for just one out of 15 residents. Look at this graph and explain to me how a policy that engineers a result this fundamental and astounding can be called “conservative”:

This is reckless and incautious, not sober and prudent.

The public didn’t need to see a graph to know there’s a problem. A new survey by a management consulting firm found that 61 percent of Americans agreed that “continued immigration into the country jeopardizes the United States.” All surveys find that a plurality or majority (depending on the wording) of Americans want less immigration. Among Republicans, Pew found that only 7 percent want increased immigration, making increased immigration as popular among Republicans as partial-birth abortion is among pro-lifers.