Pretty much every single person reading this in America is an immigrant, a child, or grand child, or great grand child of immigrants. So why do we have this huge wave of xenophobic opposition to immigration here?
Immigrants are massively beneficial to our economy. People who are willing to work their way up in tough jobs that don’t pay well and citizens now aren’t willing to are vital to growing our overall economy. Right now, our farmers have huge crops that can’t be harvested because there is no one willing to help.
The best arguments I have heard are against illegal immigrants coming in when there are legal immigrants waiting years for their turn. I think this an artificial construct though… We have so severely limited immigration that very few people can get in. We are also foolishly making legal immigrants wait more than a decade… We want their productive years, not their old age!
The other good argument I have heard is that immigrants will cost tax dollars by using social services. My suggestion is that we should reduce these social services, and also that the economic value we get from immigrants is far higher than resources utilized by them.
Beyond economics, we have a moral imperative to help people fleeing evil dictatorships. If we aren’t willing to help them with a revolution (like France and Spain who sent armies and navies to help us with the American Revolution), then we should be willing to take liberty loving people fleeing monsters. I think we should do a combination of both… Send a tank division to help the revolutionaries in Venezuela and also accept people fleeing the rape and murder of the current dictator.
Remember – you are not somehow genetically superior to immigrants. You are an immigrant! You were just lucky to be born into a free country where you don’t have to live in fear of being tortured and murdered. Your ancestors bled for freedom, and now it’s our turn to make some sacrifices to bring liberty to other countries and to help those fleeing evil.