Immigration: Facts on Immigration from the NYT Bill Keller

While I don't agree with everything Keller says in todays article in the NYT - he is clear about the impact of immigration on the U.S.  He says that Newt Gingrich's ideas on immigration are actually the best he has seen recently.  We do agree on the terrifying idea of a Gingrich presidential candidacy.

As he rightly says - immigration brings out the nasty side of many who are already here -

MTH
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Op-Ed Columnist

The Good Newt

By BILL KELLER

Published: December 11, 2011 - New York Times

Immigration is a subject that brings out the best and the worst in Americans...

As it is practiced in our politics, the subject often dredges up darker feelings: tribalism, xenophobia, envy, a pull-up-the-ladder stinginess. This is not new. The English and Dutch colonists resented the immigrant waves of Irish and Germans, who resented the later waves of Italians and Poles and Jews. Polls show that Americans only halfheartedly support immigration, and less than halfheartedly in hard times...

...immigration is a rejuvenation of our economy, a source of invention and investment at the high end and of tax-paying, productive labor at the low end. So the foundation of a new policy should be the opening of more, and more-efficient, legal channels for the newcomers who will refresh our ingenuity and replenish our aging work force (and, by the way, pay to keep the Social Security funds filled for boomers like me)...

The most scrupulous study I’ve seen of the economic impact of illegal immigration — by Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego — weighed the costs to society (schools, health care, etc.) against the benefits (tax revenues, labor productivity, etc.) and concluded that the difference was “close enough to zero to be essentially a wash.” The idea that illegal immigrants are dragging down the economy is just wrong...for complete article