Dishonesty? I said I read the Heritage Foundation report and found it credible, asking you "what assumptions do you not find valid?" You suggest that granting "earned citizenship" to millions of illegals and increasing annual legal immigration quotas could result in no impact, or a small one? That defies logic. I suggest a new comb.
In fact, it is precisely the studies which you believe or want to believe which should be MORE closely scrutinized.
I did scrutinize it. And you? One more time... what assumptions in the Heritage Foundation report do you find not credible? Or do you just dismiss it's findings because you don't want to believe them?
In the last twenty years apparently 11-12 million Illegals have arrived hence I see no reason to assume the next twenty years will be different.
Ahhhh, but my question, and the Heritage Foundation report we were discussing, was not about illegal immigration. The 100 million estimate (and its subsequent estimate of 66 million to reflect the Bingaman amendment) was projecting the number of legal immigrants over the next 20 years. There may very well be an additional 11-12 million illegals on top of that number.
It was my impression that this discussion was about Illegals sorry if I was not hearing what you were saying. If you want to discuss all immigration that is another thing altogether.
Given the falling birth rate among natives and the likely case that it will continue to fall I can see where we will need to have more people from somewhere. We will be below the replacement level before too long particularly as income levels rise. We may already be close since the US population increases at 1% per year. This is less than three million new Americans. If we assume that about a million new immigrants arrive each year and 500,000 Illegals then our pop. increase from births may be less than 0.5% per year.
It should also be noted that the Paper states that the high number of 100 or 80 million is UNLIKELY to be reached.