Let's not confuse the issue. Flake is not defending illegal immigration. If it wasn't for legal immigration most of us wouldn't be here.
The notion that cutting legal immigration in half has anything to do with being "welcoming" of immigrants is intellectually dishonest. If I cut my child's allowance in half to meet the family budget, it has nothing to do with love for my child.
Legal immigrants come here because we are a magnanimous and generous nation. We own them NOTHING and I'll be damned if some politician is going to judge me or my country because we choose to limit and direct our immigration policy.
Furtheremore, if we didn't have 12+ million ILLEGAL aliens in the country, we would be able to accept many more LEGAL immigrants.
Also, We need to deem adherents to Islam a terrorist organization and reject and remove all Muslims from the nation.
That is simply not true. Over 70% of Americans were born in the USA. This is not a nation of immigrants at all.
The USA is purposely de industrializing and does not need one more immigrant at all.