From Michael Kinsley:
Foreigners are over-represented here too. There’s “Mel B,” whom Wikipedia reveals to be Melanie Janine Brown, formerly known as Scary Spice. There’s Heidi Klum, a supermodel from Germany. The inexplicable Howie was born in Toronto. And of course there’s Simon Cowell, who is British but really qualifies at this point as a man of the world, with America’s Got Talent having spread to 190 countries.
And so what? It’s only to say that, if America’s got talent, it’s because the possessors of this talent, or their parents, decided to come here—and America decided to let them in. (When I say “them” I really mean “us,” or a vast majority of us.) And it’s a small measure of what we might lose if we slam the door on them, as many Americans would like to do. You might think that a kid with a dancing dog is no big loss to the most powerful nation on earth. But you’d be wrong. Anti-immigrant politicians can often be heard on television saying, “Oh, I’m not against immigration. I’m for immigration—I’m against illegal immigration.” Obviously—so obviously that even the dimmest, least talented among them must know they’re talking crap—this is meaningless without a number attached. You have to decide how many immigrants to take in every year, and I suppose there is a limit. But we’re nowhere near it yet.
There is no immigration crisis in this country. Certainly nothing like the scale they have to deal with in Europe.