The U.S. should welcome legal immigrants -- there's plenty of room

SAN DIEGO -- A reader recently asked me: "Is the USA full?"

This was no random survey. I had just asserted that legal immigration was the best thing about America.

The reader was not persuaded.

He asked: "Have you spent time in Los Angeles and experienced the transportation gridlock -- Bay Area, San Diego, San Bernardino, Sacramento, Orange County? What about Texas -- traffic in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, San Antonio? Have you ever been to Arizona, been on the highway trying to get to work at 8 a.m. in Phoenix?"

Yes. All of the above. I've lived in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, Dallas and Phoenix.

"Do you ever consider the high cost of housing in California? What about the cost of education? Health care?"

Yes. As a California native, I battle the rising cost of living in my home state every day.

But here's the truth from the front lines: Immigrants -- legal or illegal -- aren't bankrupting the Golden State.

The culprit is the crushing cost of public-employee pensions, coupled with the fact that police officers, firefighters, teachers, prison guards, sanitation workers and their cohort are retiring earlier, collecting bigger checks and living longer. In this deep-blue state, Democrats run the show -- and unions run the Democrats. The result is bureaucratic looting on a massive scale.

Not distracted by facts, the reader put me on the spot: "I have a simple question to a man who seems to have all the answers, HOW MANY? Is there a limit to how many the USA can take? Please let me know the correct number, as I never hear any liberals come forth with a proposed number."

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.

But the United States has a population of 327 million. One million is fewer than one-third of 1% of the total population. That's a pathetic showing for a fabled land of immigrants.

America could take in 3.27 million legal immigrants each year -- just 1% of the total U.S. population -- and civilization would not crumble.

Yet my main concern isn't about numbers. It's about motives. Given the spotty history of U.S. immigration policy, we have to be careful that -- when we settle on limits of any kind -- we don't base those decisions on our fears or prejudices and camouflage them under a vague notion of occupancy rates.

The reader signed off: "As I see it, the USA is full, nothing to do with racist, nativist, white people, just a matter of logistics."

Don't you believe it. Throughout history, we've seen this movie over and over again. Folks like these aren't worried that the United States is taking in too many people. They're worried that we're taking in too many of the wrong people.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.