Seattle blogger David Keenan last year dug up some partial, but quite interesting immigration data showing how popular the U.S. has remained with newcomers in the Age of Bush. A fuller picture emerges today. Immigration into the hated, despotic, imperialistic, war-mongering United States of America - plagued by ever-sharper divisions between the haves and the have-nots, institutional racism, white privilege, and xenophobia - has been growing at a record pace since 2000. USA Today has more.

Despite tougher border scrutiny after 9/11, a total of 7.9 million immigrants have come to the USA since 2000, more than in any other five-year period in the nation's history, figures released Monday show. Almost half, or 3.7 million, entered illegally, according to an analysis of Census data by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates controlling the flow of legal and illegal immigrants. The report comes as a heated immigration debate looms this week in Congress. The House is expected to tackle a Republican bill that aims to strengthen border security and increase penalties for illegal immigration. An estimated 11 million immigrants live illegally in the USA.

....The report also confirms that immigrants are headed to more states, including Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington and Pennsylvania. Immigration is "starting to have a bigger impact on more states while it continues to have a very big impact on traditional immigrant magnets such as California," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

Despite the constant drumbeat of anti-U.S. invective in the national and international press, despite the loud-mouthed rantings of Bush-haters at home and abroad, despite public universities lovingly archiving graffitio stemming from Bush Derangement Disorder (BDD), people are voting with their feet. As much or more than ever before, the U.S.A. is seen around the world as a land of opportunity and freedom, a place where immigrants come to make a new and better life for themselves and their families. For some, who immigrate illegally, that new and better life includes generous government benefits to which they are not legally entitled. We need an immigration policy that welcomes legal immigrants, rounds up and sorts out the illegal immigrants now here illegally, and seals the borders to prevent any further influx of illegal immigrants.

TECHNORATI TAGS: IMMIGRATION, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, UNITED STATES

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 13, 2005 09:55 AM