Importing files will leave them where they are instead of copying to HD

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How is the drive formatted where the SD footage is supposed to be copied onto? FCP requires drives to be formatted as APFS or HFS+.

As a troubleshooting step, copy the files from SD card to your hard drive and try importing them from there. What is that result?

How are you determining the files are not copied from SD card to within the FCP library? Does nothing show up in the FCP Event Browser? Or did you determine that by examining the size of the library bundle in Finder?

If nothing shows up in the Event Browser, do you have a filter enabled such as "Show Favorites?"

If the clips appear but you believe they are not copied, in the Event Browser right-click on a clip and pick "Reveal in Finder." What location does that show?

If the clips do not appear after import, in Finder select the library, right-click and pick "Show Package Contents." Navigate to the event and see if any files are there. These could be normal files or symlink files (with an arrow on them).

When you imported the files from the SD card did you use the FCP import dialog or drag/drop via Finder? If you've done the above and no files were copied, try this:

Working from a copy of those files on hard disk, try importing them by drag/drop from Finder. When you do that, do it slowly and carefully. The drag/drop cursor will display either a little black arrow on the file or a green plus sign on the file.

The arrow means it's importing them with "leave files in place." The green plus sign means it is copying to the library. In Finder if you hold down the OPT key it will switch from one mode to the other.

The result of these tests will help us understand what is happening.

The reason the MTS files won't fit together on the timeline might be related to handling the files separately not as part of an AVCHD or other type of folder tree. If the "bare" files are imported they may show as segments. If the folder tree (or AVCHD bundle) is used, it normally auto-spans the clips.

I haven't dealt with that material for a long time, so I can't remember the specifics. I vaguely recall there was an issue with some older Panasonic Lumix cameras having that issue. Some cameras in that era had different characteristics depending on the selected codec, e.g, mp4 vs mov vs AVCHD. Some of the older cameras (maybe Lumix G7?) were stuck at 4GB file segments. I just cannot remember.

Back when we were using older Sony AVCHD cameras, I used EditReady to rewrap and concatenate the individual segments into a single, continuous file. Making the filenames globally unique was also a benefit. Maybe it might be helpful in your situation. I see Hedge has a 10 day free trial.

So after you import, and the import process has completed, you remove the SD card and the footage shows as offline? You sure you're waiting long enough for the import to complete?

The leave in place option isn't available when importing from an SD card. It has to be copied to another location, either inside the library or a designed location.

What SSD is the media supposed to be copied to? Where is the library? Are you copying to the library?