The 35.2 million immigrants living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded. It is also two-and-a-half times tally of the 13.5 million immigrants during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910. |
The ability of a state or local government to do a great deal about immigration is limited. No question about it. |
The bottom line is the number of people who came from 2000 to 2004 was more than we've seen in American history, 6.2 million people in a four-year period, |
The bottom line is what this tells us is that this problem is not going to take care of itself over time, ... Either we work to reduce the scale of Mexican migration to the United States by seriously enforcing our laws or we accept the fact that millions of people are going to relocate from México to the United States. |
The idea that there are jobs that Americans won't do is economic gibberish. All the big occupations that immigrants are in - construction, janitorial, even agriculture - are overwhelmingly done by native Americans. |
The least educated Americans are getting hurt. |
The obvious thing is to enforce the law, at the border and at the work site, and to deny access to bank accounts and driver licenses. |
The public agrees on certain things, and one of these is the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, ... in the end it's mostly within Washington's purview. |
The whole idea that 'America has a 5 percent unemployment rate and therefore clearly we need lots of immigrant labor' is very foolish. |
There's broad public dissatisfaction with any plan that does not start with enforcement. |
They're looking at 46 million people who would like to come--if the numbers are to believed. Even if a small fraction decide to come, you're looking at enormous numbers. |
With the number of labor-intensive acres going up in California, their behavior does not seem to suggest that they see a labor shortage, even if that's what they tell reporters. Farmers always think there's not enough labor. It's a very unpredictable business. You can't control the weather. The one thing you can push for is a lax immigration program, or a guest-worker program. |