Why? We can make our own new citizens.
We won't have to give them English as a second language.
We won't have to worry that they will serve as a fifth column, unlike immigrants from Muslim countries (if we raise them correctly).
We won't be stealing the best and brightest from countries that need these people's talents. Besides, we have our own bright minds.
We shouldn't import new people just to support an unsustainable social welfare system.
And maintaining high rates of population growth makes us vulnerable. China, for example, has to import a majority of their food to feed their huge population. They are suffering from severe environmental impacts because of that same population. We've seen the impacts of being oil dependent-it's stupid to add food dependence to the list.
This whole "we need immigrants" idea is a fallacy that has yet to be properly challenged.
And how do you propose to do that? Would you FORCE every family to have at least 4 children so that there would be at least two kids to pay for the Social Security of each parent?
Dr. Glendon's point is that we are NOT replacing ourselves. It's a function of an affluent society that families desire to limit the number of kids they have so as to increase their affluence. As a result, everyone moves up in economic levels, with the lowest levels being those who are in the welfare structure, and who either can't, or just simply won't work.
There is such a thing as jobs that Americans won't do, even though many won't admit it. How many young men in the ghettos or in small poor towns in Appalachia or the Midwest really want to do the kind of work that the immigrants are doing, such as gardening, landscaping, menial construction work, etc.? Employers all over the country are going begging for employees for jobs like this, but most young American men and women feel that this work is 'beneath' them. Just recall the furor from many about 'hamburger flipping jobs'. At least those are indoor, out of the weather jobs.
A case in point is the situation on the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans. Apparently there were no Americans clamoring for those destruction and re-construction jobs. Jesse Jackson came away from Houston with an empty bus when he tried to recruit black men and women to come back to New Orleans to help re-build 'their' city. Contractors have had to hire Mexicans who have come here to work. I have no idea whether these companies are checking their paperwork, but I can tell you this. These folks are being paid well for what they do. There are groups of young men who are content to all live together in crowded conditions so as to reduce their costs and increase the amount of money they will take back home with them to their families.
If there HAD been Americans who wanted to do that work, and the Mexicans were getting slave wages and beating them out of jobs, I'd be the first to be against that, but it is simply NOT the case.
I am tired of pressing 1 for English.