[queequeger]

Ok, I've dug for about 20 minutes looking for specific numbers on how many people apply for visas every year. I found one as low as 3 million (post 9/11) and I found one as high as 13 million. Let's cut it even and say it's 10 million who apply. Even if we allow every last on in, which I'm not proposing (probably set a limit at 8 million a year and see where that gets us, more if necessary later), that's a 3% rise. Let's consider that about half of those are re-applications (which is likely more, as we only allow .6 - 1.2 million in each year, depending). After a year or two, the number would drop significantly.

In a country with a population of 300 million people, where's this 40% going to come from?

If the ENTIRE COUNTRY OF MEXICO (100 million strong) immigrated into our country, our population would rise by about 30%...

Wikipedia has some wonderful stats on US immigration throughout the ages... did you know that in 1830 the US population was about 17 million? How about the fact that 800 thousand foreign born immigrants crossed our borders over a decade, accounting for a 4.7% increase in our population? The following decade, 2.2 million immigrated, accounting for a ~10% increase in population size.

By my guesstimation, the US allowing 30 million people into the country over the next decade would be about equivelent. Right?

Remind me what catastrophic economic event occured around 1850. I've used VERY high extimates to avoid argument where possible, so that if we allow that old fashioned hubris that 'everyone on the globe wants to live here!' it can be shown that there will be no great collapse of the super power. Our economy is a draft horse, and can bring impressive power to bear when need be. How about we stop being so selfish, and instead of increasing our GDP 4-5 % annually, we can only increase by about 3% for a few years? Dear god, it's the end of the world.

:gasp: man that was a long winded retort. I just blew my whole lunch!