Just a couple of points. Andy said: “The fact is that we are culturally proud of our immigrant heritage. As a nation, we want to encourage immigration.” Is this true? In fact, immigration to the USA has been spasmodic and regionally biased. For quite long spells, there was no immigration at all into quite big regions. (There was very nearly no immigration into New England, for instance for almost TWO HUNDRED YEARS between the Puritan settlements of the mid 17th century and the arrival of the Catholic Irish in the mid 19th). There was hardly any immigration into the entire USA from 1924 to 1965. If Americans are so strongly emotionally attached to immigration, how come they weren’t periodically rioting in the streets of Boston and Providence all through those 200 years? Can you offer me some evidence of popular demand for more immigration in the 1924-65 lull? Jonah: On the economic point, here is a list of the world’s nations ranked by GNP per capita. If there’s a correlation with generous immigration policies, I’ll be darned if I can see it. Iceland (foreign born population 6 percent, according to the CIA factbook) beats us (foreign born population 12 percent, I think). Economists are idiots.