what made America great were aliens who came to this country with a trade or a profession to self sustain and sponsors that were responsible for them.
And they checked in at the Border.
Like my father did about 100 yrs. ago.
The US is the third largest nation in terms of population at 328MM, comprising 4.3% of the world's population. We also have the largest number of immigrants vs other countries, but while our proportion of immigrants is high vs G8 countries it is small vs several other (mostly Gulf-area) countries. Further, of the roughly 750k naturalized citizens in 2016, 14% came from Mexico, 6% from India, 5.5% from the Philippines, 4.8% from PRC, 4.3% from Cuba, 4.2% from the Dominican Republic and 3.3% from Vietnam.
However, almost half of the immigrants and their children (I've got to imagine that includes illegals...while historically we'd admit people near the poverty line if they had a family here there seem to be new controls in place so we don't legally admit people who don't have a job) are in or near poverty vs 31% for natives.Yet, the poverty rate for Indian immigrants (who, from my vantage point, comprise a large number of skilled individuals) is much lower than that for other immigrants and is actually close to that of people born here. Thus, legal immigration isn't a huge part of the picture and even then there is a YUGE element of poverty. It's also worth noting that we had 3.8MM live births last year...America still is procreating.
Despite all of this noise in immigration, the US produces 24% of global GDP and 52% of global stock market capitalization. We punch above our weight economically, despite a poverty-prone immigrant class.