I was born in the US but my ethnicity is visually ambiguous and people assume I'm Mexican, Filipino, or Indian (in that order) based on the type of brown person they grew up with. In CA, no one particularly cares what type of brown person I am. But when I lived in Ohio, I was told that I should "go back home where [I] came from", that I'm one of the good ones and should bring more of my family over, or that I'm "stealing jobs from honest Americans," based on whether the redneck in question thought I was Mexican, Filipino, or Indian. My cousin and his wife, in Indiana, used to experience the same harassment regularly until they started wearing their scrubs everywhere so people would know that they're doctors.
I turned down a very well-paying job in Ohio (and came back to CA) because the people there were so vile.
Many immigrants are even more religious and/or convervative than "White and American".
Just of a different culture.
And another was in sales in industrial manufacturing and there was a lot of misogyny and low-grade racism there.
They're in WA now so and much happier.
¹ the "isn't happening to me" thing is sort of analogous to "works on my machine". Because of the range of stuff, things usually do "work on my machine".
It's fine to prefer living in one culture over another, which is exactly what both your friend and the people they complained about are doing.
And to be clear, I did not mean illegal immigration. I meant legal immigration.
It's like how for most of my life I barely understood the mitigating measures women take in many situations where I don't even notice the situation.