The U.S. should welcome legal immigrants -- there's plenty of room
Don't ask me to explain liberals. They baffle me. They turn their outrage on and off like a light switch depending on who occupies the White House. During the eight years of the Obama administration, they fought me when I complained that immigrant families were separated, children were dumped into foster care, women were deported for selling tamales without a permit and local police were pressured to enforce federal immigration law through the program known as Secure Communities.
Still, the reader's questions nagged at me.
Is the USA full?
Not even close. The United States isn't the Plaza Hotel during the holiday season. There isn't a sign out front announcing: "No Vacancy." There is still plenty of room -- depending on where you look.
As of 2015, there were as many as 13 states where the population density amounts to fewer than 50 people per square mile: Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Oregon and Maine.
The United States isn't all Times Square and Grand Central Station.
How many immigrants should the USA take in?
As for an exact number, that's not for me to say. Any more than it's the job of everyday Americans to whiteboard their own immigration reform plan. These are matters for Congress, and the president, to sort out.
Still, I know this much: What immigration restrictionists consider a big number isn't that big. The United States takes in about 1 million legal immigrants annually; about half of those people are already in the United States and become legal due to a change of status.
Conservatives brag about that 1 million figure as if it were an accomplishment worthy of a Nobel Prize. Perhaps for a nation of 10 million people. Imagine taking in, each year, a number of immigrants equal to 10% of your country's population.
...continued
