Should the U.S. reduce immigration
“I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.”
- President Ronald Reagan (1989)
"It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community, are not the people we are in want of.
"I should be exceedingly sorry, sir, that our rule of naturalization excluded a single person of good fame that really meant to incorporate himself into our society; on the other hand, I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege, but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States."
- James Madison, member of the First U.S. Congress from Virginia (1790)
"It’s not the immigrants—it’s us. What’s different about immigration today as opposed to a century ago is not the characteristics of the newcomers but the characteristics of our society. Immigrants are what they’ve always been: not the poorest of the poor but one step up from the bottom, strivers looking for better lives for their children, coming from rural or small- town backgrounds in traditional—what we would call third- world—societies. But the changes that define modern America—in our society, economy, government, and technology, for example—are so fundamental that our past success in dealing with immigration is simply no longer relevant.
"[T]he central problem is the large-scale settlement of people from abroad, whoever they are and however they get here: legal or illegal, skilled or unskilled, immigrants or guest workers, European or Latin or Asian or African."
- Mark Krikorian in The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal (2008)
What do you think?
- President Ronald Reagan (1989)
"It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community, are not the people we are in want of.
"I should be exceedingly sorry, sir, that our rule of naturalization excluded a single person of good fame that really meant to incorporate himself into our society; on the other hand, I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege, but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States."
- James Madison, member of the First U.S. Congress from Virginia (1790)
"It’s not the immigrants—it’s us. What’s different about immigration today as opposed to a century ago is not the characteristics of the newcomers but the characteristics of our society. Immigrants are what they’ve always been: not the poorest of the poor but one step up from the bottom, strivers looking for better lives for their children, coming from rural or small- town backgrounds in traditional—what we would call third- world—societies. But the changes that define modern America—in our society, economy, government, and technology, for example—are so fundamental that our past success in dealing with immigration is simply no longer relevant.
"[T]he central problem is the large-scale settlement of people from abroad, whoever they are and however they get here: legal or illegal, skilled or unskilled, immigrants or guest workers, European or Latin or Asian or African."
- Mark Krikorian in The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal (2008)
What do you think?
Comment
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Comment by jason allen on August 6, 2009 at 4:20pm - Which one of these comments do you agree with?
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