This man is oversimplifying the issue. He could easily be a wolf in sheep's clothing: unless he thinks we should reassign all the resources we use for immigration and put them toward international development, then he is just using a false premise to promote isolationism.
That's what I think of him as a presenter. As for his premise, I heartily disagree. It seems strange that his only thesis is that immigration can't go very far in solving global poverty. Again, oversimplification. Is that really one of the main goals of allowing immigration? Has it ever been, since the pilgrims first arrived? Immigration is about continuing the promise of opportunity that America gave to our own ancestors. Yes, we can't afford to take everyone. It doesn't take a fancy set of Tupperware to see that. But to those who we can find room for, and who can accept the responsibilities of living in the US, should be given the same opportunity.
In some areas, his argument is simply flawed. With refugees, for example, it's impossible to give them a future without bringing them to the US (or another willing country). By the time they are granted refugee status, they have already fled their first home due to a well-founded fear, the country they fled to cannot or will not grant them permanent status, and they have no hope that their home country will be habitable during their lifetimes. Immigration is the only option for them.
There are many other categories of immigrants, many of which help the US greatly in economic terms. These don't fit the description of 'straining the economic and social fabric' in America.
My ancestors were immigrants. Some were even refugees. They all, in a very literal sense, sought a "better country," full of better promises. My refugee progenitors crossed an international boundary because they were driven out under threat of death. In refugee parlance, they had a "well-founded fear" of persecution. They came to the desert and made it blossom.
I imagine that my ancestors didn't have perfect English. They were also extremely poor. And the Native Americans who lived here didn't give them visas or permission to enter.
If Allen Joseph, my direct refugee ancestral father, were here today, as a new immigrant, and you asked me to tell him to go back to where he was from and 'lift himself up by his bootstraps,' I'd say you were profoundly un-American.
