Immigration & (IL)logic

I have days when I feel thoroughly confused by the rhetoric and fears thrown around on the subject of immigration. I hear that we need to reduce immigration to the US because immigrants take the good jobs away from Americans. So we should disallow highly educated immigrants who are skilled and qualified to fill the high demand high tech jobs? Ok, so then another day I hear that we should only allow highly skilled, educated immigrants because unskilled workers, the ones who pick our vegetables and fruits and perhaps wait on us at the corner store, will somehow sit around doing nothing except collecting welfare benefits and costing us honest taxpayers a lot of money. These people of course, are the ones the president says comes from “shithole” countries – the countries that send us, he says, rapists, drug dealers and murderers. And apparently workers for his hotels, but that’s another story. Is the bottom line that we should simply allow no one to immigrate to our country? Interesting to play around with wondering what would happen to our economy and culture with no immigrants. And I keep meaning to look for statistics on what percentage of people who live in the United States either immigrated or have parents or grandparents who immigrated. What ever happened to that whole ““Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

thing? Of course it never really existed. And hatred and fear of immigrants is hardly a new thing. “Voyage of the Damned” is on my “books that every American should read” list.  OK, I’m still confused. Pretty disappointed. Royally pissed. But after writing my “Making the World a Better Place” piece for the day, it’s harder to work up a good portion of burning rage.