We all like MORE

Who can resist that deal?  FOUR free ounces of hand lotion.

Or 50% more scum remover (biting my tongue on this one)

Or more RAID.

Our desire for MORE is not lost on our politicians.  From "A Chicken in Every Pot" (Herbert Hoover) to Obamacare, voters like to get more of all the good stuff.

It should come as no surprise that immigration reform has its share of MORE stuff.  But before we talk about the bonuses, we need to look at the baseline data.

Source link: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/lpr_fr_2010.pdf

In reviewing the green card numbers from the last decade, these two things are true:
1) That we authorized 10,501,053 people to live and work here, over 1 million people a year, even during the recession.  Even when unemployment was over 10%, and higher than that in states which traditionally are home to immigrants.
2) That one little country of 107 million received more of those green cards than anywhere else.  That's right; Mexico was issued 1,693,141 green cards, or an average of nearly 170,000 per year.

So, when the politicians start talking about MORE immigration it is only fair for us to ask, "How many more?" and "Why?"

Obama, and Bush before him, wants to add to the immigration burden in three ways.  Right from the start, the Obama White House has sought the following, according to the January 21, 2009 White House website:

"Improve Our Immigration System: Fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill."

His first call for MORE is to streamline the bureaucracy, meaning that one million a year is not enough and needs to be ramped-up.

His second call for more is to increase family unification, aka chain migration.  That will require a higher number, but he never tells you how much higher.

 

"Bring People Out of the Shadows: Support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens."

Here's the third call for MORE, a legalization program.  There are at least 11 million illegal aliens residing here now.  Seven million are from Mexico.  That represents over 41 YEARS of green card recipients!

MORE has a downside, especially when it comes to immigration.  MORE means MORE cars on the road, MORE children in the schools, MORE need for social services, MORE police...

Any discussion on immigration reform ought to begin with the question, "How many immigrants does the United States really need?"

I'm not hearing that discussion, are you?