Why not reduce legal immigration?

Letter date: 
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Letter publisher: 
OregonLive.com
Letter author: 
Elizabeth Van Staaveren
Letter body: 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., dares to venture into a taboo subject for Democrats and most Republicans: He advocates reducing the current extremely high volume of legal immigration. In a recent interview, Sanders said, "Open borders? ... That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ... You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids? ... I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer."

Many studies prove that excessive immigration has adversely affected the wages and job opportunities of citizens. Employers exploit the visa system, which is riddled with fraud, to import foreign workers and dismiss citizens....

Sanders might have mentioned the effects of exploding population numbers on our natural environment, the loss of forests and farmland to ever-expanding housing and related infrastructure, or the overcrowding in cities and the complications of governance for so many people....

U.S. voters do not want the population increases caused by these enormous levels of immigration. Many honest polls say so, and yet congressional leaders of both parties ignore citizens' needs and opinions and work ceaselessly for more and more legal immigration...

In the 2016 presidential race, Sanders is one of the many contenders. He's currently rated F- by NumbersUSA, which compiles records of votes and public statements by candidates on immigration and displays them on their website. His voting record doesn't actually match the support for less immigration that he recently expressed, but he's done a great service to the public just to talk about it. Hopefully, he and Donald Trump will break the taboos on critical examination of our recklessly expansive legal immigration policies. They both speak frankly; how refreshing that is.