There is a strange psychosis within business/government/think tank circles: whatever the problem, the answer is always more immigration.
We do not need to re-inflate the housing bubble but we do need to deflate the immigration bubble (one million green cards, 100,000 or more H1-Bs, and the entire list of other visa types offered each year).
A nation is more than just a random collection of people. It is not just the meeting of factors of production and units of consumption. A “proposition nation” does not, indeed cannot, exist.
I am not surprised that someone like Schumer would propse this. Sadly, many on the right, who love the “proposition nation” idea, may fall for this. We need an immigration pause not a further boost.
Immigrants are bad for the environment. They consume much more energy here than where they came from adding to pollution and the need for more coal power. They buy more consumer goods such as large cars to bus around every living branch of their family tree that follows them here, driving up the demand and cost of oil. They fill up the schools, roads, hospitals, jails, and court houses requiring more to be built. Their idea of a farmer's market is to ship in food items that have no English name from 2-8,000 miles away.
There is no easier way to reduce pollution than to reduce the number of immigrants, and no easier way to create jobs for Americans during a double dip recession. It's real funny how all that is trumped just because first generation immigrants tend to vote for the looter party. There's not one peep out of the Watermelons about the environmental effects of immigration.