Legal Immigration Is Good For America

When my Italian grandparents came to America legally in the early 1900′s like so many other immigrants, they had no education, a few dollars in their pockets and very little except what was in the suitcases that they carried.  In those days, there was no welfare system, so it was work or starve.  The United States had become a world power with growing industrialization and a need for cheap labor to man factories all over the country; but particularly in the Mid West.  One of my grandfathers worked in a steel mill until he was forced to retire at 65.  The other grandfather worked whatever jobs he could get, but eventually sold fruit door to door, which led to a grocery store.  

The economy we face in America today is entirely different.  While there is still some factory work, it has been minimized with the jobs that have gone overseas and robotics.  Most of the manual labor we need is farm work to pick fruit and vegetables.  Yes, we have people working in restaurants, digging ditches, doing yard work etc; but other jobs involve more skilled labor.  We can implement a guest worker program to deal with these tasks.  

What we don’t need are illegal aliens coming to America with little or no marketable job skills that will end up on the dole.  It is true that perhaps two or three generations later with education, their children could contribute to our country; but in the mean time, these people would be a burden on the American tax payer when we have a $28 Trillion National Debt and both Social Security and Medicare headed towards insolvency.  We can’t be the welfare system for the world. 

What we do need are legal immigrants coming from all over the world with marketable jobs skills no matter their race or religion.  In particular, we need all the doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, plumbers, nurses, electricians, carpenters etc. that we can get.   In other words, we need people to replace Baby Boomers that did these jobs that will be retiring at a rate of 10,000 a day for the next 15 to 20 years. 

Clearly, we need a common sense immigration policy that deals with illegal aliens already in our country and uses a merit based system related to legal immigration.  This is not about race or religion and anybody who says so is a liar.   Legal immigration should admit anyone giving them a Green Card and a path to citizenship who can contribute to the greatness of our country.  We need to stop with the politics of immigration reform and get the job done.