The US Economy tanked because of the artificially generated real estate bubble and the unregulated and non-transparent risk markets like "credit default swaps." This was something that came down because of the greed and recklessness of Wall Street and the failure of our elected officials to practice oversight. None of that can be blamed on immigrants. Also, I'm talking about a future increasing need for immigrants unless we get our own birth rates up.

I agree with Jack: Third World uneducated immigrants ae not generally a boon to a First World economy. They will not support us in our dotage: more likely, we will be forced to work into our 70s to support THEM. This is already happening in some countries in Europe where they pay lavish welfare benefits to newly come,unskilled and uneducated immigrants and their children, while at the same time, they are increasing the minimum retirement age for the native.Holland had a huge bitter debate about this only very recently.

Plus, Third World immigrants are people with their own interests, just like we are. Do you really think that millions of Third Worlders are going to want to support old white First World people in their dotage? No, they won’t. Once they get voting power they will simply vote to deprive all the old white people of their Social Security and Medicare so they can spend more money on their own children. That’s just human nature. We already see this happening with the Latino organizations supporting Obamacare for illegal Latino immigrants, at the expense of cutting 500 billion dollars from Medicare that benefits mostly old white people. This trend will continue — it’s just human nature. No culture on earth wants to work a good part of their lives to support another culture’s old folks, especially when it would come at the expense of their own children.

Secondly, with family reunification, younger immigrants can import their own old people and put them directly on our social security. A good example is Obama’s illegal immigrant Aunt Zeituni who lives in public housing, receives welfare, is 57 years old, and does not work. How is Aunt Zeituni contributing to a “younger” workforce? How are the parents, uncles and aunts, and grandparents of today’s illegal immigrants going to contribute to a “younger” workforce once they are imported by their younger legalized relatives? They won’t at all.

Lastly I think it is very odd to see pro-immigration, open borders shilling on a blog supposedly devoted to environmental issues. The environmental degradation due to overpopulation that I have seen occur in California over just the past 30 years has been breathtaking.

This author is dubious and the article is straight propaganda. THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF PEOPLE IN CALIFORNIA. Everything here is over-crowded, our environment, freeways, schools, clean air, water resources are stretched to the maximum. We do not need more people, and specifically we do not need more unskilled immigrants. We have enough cheep young labor (that are having children like they're human copy machines) to last the next 100 years.

1. We must enforce our laws, and uphold our values. We stand for the rule of law and no one is above it. We will not give preferential immigration treatment to lawbreakers over law abiding people coming here legally. Therefore, illegal aliens must be forced to leave.

2. We must mandate E Verify for every employer for current and future employees.

3. We must abolish family reunfication as a basis for immigration and go after the most educated immigrants.

Most of the models don't have "healthy replacement rates" I know there is concern about Muslim majorities in Europe, but not enough to get people to have kids even with government incentives. Most of the gloom and doom projections about Muslims assume no conversion or secularization in subsequent generations. That isn't realistic.

Throughout our more than two hundred years as a nation we have actually benefited from both skilled and unskilled immigration.