> Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
> The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
> Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me
I think it would be hypocritical at best, given America's history and current position to take such a stance. Surely the right thing to do is not to be scared of the immigration bogeyman and take some concrete steps towards the future, rather than closing the door and pretending things will get better by itself. It won't.
If you want to comfort yourself in a nice blanket of blame, go ahead and blame the immigrants rather than the people in power who have actually caused this.
Mass immigration made sense when the U.S. was a manufacturing colossus, no longer. Immigration should be targeted and far lower than it is now.
It's kind of sad to see a nation built by, from and for poor immigrants completely forget their origins.
But times also change. What may have made sense in 1903 may be detrimental to the descendants of those immigrants today. I believe we should have a sharp but temporary reduction in most immigration today to see if it benefits the lowest wage earners in the U.S. It's an easy policy to reverse if it doesn't.
This implies that the U.S. is a victim, and not an active participant and benefiter of this system (globalization and increased automation).
Why in the face of globalization (and now increased automation) the U.S. continues to have an effectively open-door policy to low-skill workers makes no sense at all.
As a U.S. citizen, I'd like to see a return to the temporary moratorium that existed until the mid 1960s (say 10 to 15 years) on most immigration beyond high-skill (however that is defined) and an end to "chain migration" in which entire families are allowed to immigrate regardless of most other factors.