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Originally posted by stevepaa
Is there any country that has limited immigration and done well over the long haul?
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This is a good and legitimate question, but IMO one of the major fallacies of the "pro-immigration" argument is the assumption that nothing has changed in the U.S.A. since the 19th or early 20th century. In reality, he world today is unrecognizable from that time; even 50 years ago there were HALF as many people in the world as today, and the U.S.A. was an uncrowded, inexpensive place where any honest person w/ a trade could support a family w/ children on one income. There were no suburbs to speak of, and the infrastructure of cities was relatively young and in good repair. Schools and hospitals operated at 100% or close to it w/ no funding shortage and taxes were low. Healthcare and basic survival for the middle or working class was a non-issue.
As I said, unrecognizable. As much as any good American, (or citizen of other developed country), would like to welcome people from lesser places to become American and share in our way of life, there are now practical limits to the sheer #s of them we can accommodate. The infrastructure of the U.S. is stretched thin, and the addition of several million uninsured, uneducated + quickly multiplying people will break us rather quickly. Anyone who doubts this can simply come to Los Angeles or any city in the southwest for confirmation. It is not a situation that will fix itself, (as is the liberal fantasy), and it will be a major man-made disaster for the United States. This is not your grandfathers immigration.
I still believe that the U.S. can welcome immigrants, and in fact needs them, but only in a controlled and just fashion which takes into consideration the needs of refugees everywhere in the world and people who are real, legal U.S. citizens. I see Mexico as a place that has mostly created its own problems by not adapting to the modern world, and not automatically entitled to enter the U.S. and set up camp. Even though we have a system that is ready to exploit them for cheap labor once they are here.