The solution to "illegals"

Reader comment on: Magnet's Immigration Dichotomy
in response to reader comment: Two weak arguments

Submitted by Harry Binswanger (United States), Jul 21, 2014 11:40

David writes: "lead to millions more illegal immigrants." I hope it will lead to millions--hundreds of millions--more immigrants. It's their being illegalized that's the problem. The fault lies with our government in illegalizing immigration. Legalize it and the "problem of illegals" vanishes overnight.

Foreigners have the right to come here. The *right*. (They don't have the right to welfare or to vote in our elections.)

And it's to our selfish interest that more people come here. We need productive people (the number going on welfare is tiny--and I would be delighted if we tighten the existing laws against immigrants getting welfare, passed under Clinton.)

The U.S. is a vastly underpopulated country. I did a calculation based on population and land area (excluding water and excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and found that if half the world's population came here (an unthinkable eleven-fold increase in our population, from 300 million to 3.3 billion people), America would be a bit less densely populated than England. England has 384 people/sq.km; vs. 360 people/sq. km. if our population multiplied 11-fold.

Here's another comparison: with half of mankind living here, we would be less densely populated than the state of New Jersey is today (453/sq. km.). And southern N.J. contains a lot of uninhabited land (e.g., the huge "pine barrens"). Wikipedia: "The Pine Barrens... is a heavily forested area of coastal plain stretching across more than seven counties of southern New Jersey. ... the Pine Barrens remains largely rural and undisturbed.

For more on why we need open immigration: hblist.com/immigr.htm


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Other reader comments on this item

Title By Date
Two weak arguments [111 words]David in CalJul 20, 2014 13:42
⇒ The solution to "illegals" [254 words]Harry BinswangerJul 21, 2014 11:40
The piece you're missing [44 words]BillJul 18, 2014 19:12
Disagree [281 words]ChrisJul 18, 2014 11:38
Who is this "we"? [211 words]Harry BinswangerJul 19, 2014 13:24
No shame on the editor [123 words]John GillisJul 19, 2014 22:34

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