Many people understand the visa waiver program to mean "America has no immigration laws which apply to white people." This is not actually what the visa waiver program means.
Many countries are pretty lax with regards to people immigrating to the country to work. The United States has fallen into a weird equilibrium where working illegally is very, very common and, since the polity hates this fact, also very, very illegal, but only enforceable against people who mostly follow the rules. If you're reading this and don't hold a US passport, you probably mostly follow the rules, so you need to be very, very careful to not violate immigration law when coming to the US.
Many countries are pretty lax with regards to people immigrating to the country to work. The United States has fallen into a weird equilibrium where working illegally is very, very common and, since the polity hates this fact, also very, very illegal, but only enforceable against people who mostly follow the rules. If you're reading this and don't hold a US passport, you probably mostly follow the rules, so you need to be very, very careful to not violate immigration law when coming to the US.