Robust legal immigration is vital to our nation’s future

Opponents of illegal immigration too often make a serious mistake, lumping illegal and legal immigration into the same framework. The two are very different and while reasonable minds will differ about important issues including what types of legal immigrants to accept and how many to accept annually, opponents of illegal immigration should revisit their thinking and EMBRACE robust legal immigration to help keep America strong in the decades ahead.

We live and compete in a world economy now. We need an educated, hard-working, freedom-loving population, both native-born and immigrant, to grow our economy and help us compete as the Baby Boomers retire.

Consider some of the companies currently creating jobs and wealth for Americans:

* Google, co-founder born in Russia

* Intel, first leader was from Hungary

* Yahoo, co-founder born in Taiwan

* Sun Microsystems, co-founders from Germany and India

* “Just over half the companies founded in Silicon Valley from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s had founders born abroad, according to Vivek Wadhwa, an immigration scholar working at Duke and Harvard.” [Here is the NYT article that is the source for these bullet points.]

Would we really prefer these companies be based abroad?

Let’s face it: America isn’t producing enough skilled engineers. As Newsweek memorably quoted GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt a few years back:

“More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees,” says Immelt. “So, if we want to be the massage capital of the world, we’re well on our way.”

Legal immigration can mitigate this problem, at least until our universities focus less on “Womyn’s Studies” and more on getting women and men educated for the challenges of the world economy.

But it’s not just engineers. Who can deny the hard-working, entrepreneurial spirit that is so easily spotted at immigrant-run small businesses? The United States needs MORE hard workers, and MORE people sharing the income tax burden that is currently carried entirely by just 52% of workers.

So we should invite immigration from those who want to come here to work, rather than receive government benefits. We should recognize that we are stronger when a foreign-born doctor wants to set up shop here in the USA, not weaker. Sure, we want to be sure they embrace our freedom, our democracy, and our tolerance of differences. And yes, our English language.

But immigration done right strengthens America. We should close the border to illegals as we open the front door to hard-working, freedom-loving legal immigrants, not just from Central and South America, but from across the globe.

Legal immigration can help us in engineering, agriculture, and other areas More coming soon.	Our mix of legal immigration should be reworked to grow numbers of educated immigrants More coming soon.
Accepting refugees and asylum-seekers is part of our nation’s greatness While we can debate the numbers we accept annually and the controls we need to block out criminals and potential terrorists, the United States has a long history of accepting political refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing terror at home. This is part of our greatness, and can even enhance our national security (accepting people fleeing the tyranny of North Korea, for example, is smart policy while also being humane).

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