The US built itself up on immigration since the beginning, and most impactfully over the past hundred years with “brain draining” the rest of the world. “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and all that. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say most of the US’s success comes on the back of these immigrants with 40% of Fortune 500 companies being founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.

But the economy has changed since that poem was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. The US has become primarily a service industry demanding skilled laborers, relegating manual laborers to the lower class along with the illegal, and often unskilled, immigrants.

So you’re a blue collar American living in Appalachia, vying for the same factory job that your dad and his dad held and were able to afford a middle-class lifestyle. Except now groceries are getting hard to afford, fueling your truck hurts, and your new neighbor is a programmer who wanted a country home to relax in and work remote and finds your accent charming. You know you’re now at the bottom of the ladder, and you think the illegals willing to do your work at half the price are the cause. So deport all the imigrintz! Bring back white America! Make America Great Again! /s

I don’t have all the answers, but I think we should continue to restrict unskilled immigration and continue making it risky for companies to hire illegal immigrants, while offering a path to legality for those having been here for 5+ years. Raise the minimum wage, effectively securing a better lifestyle for those at the bottom (immigrant and native). Make some better/strategic investments in Central American countries so that people there have a better lifestyle and it isn’t worth it for unskilled labor to immigrate. Hell, build some manufacturing capacity so we’re less reliant on China.

Everyone prospers, America continues brain-draining, and the world keeps turning.