Con

James R. Edwards, Jr., PhD, Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a Feb. 2006 Center for Immigration Studies essay entitled "Two Sides of the Same Coin, The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration," wrote:

“Reduce legal immigration. If illegal immigration is to be curbed or stopped, then legal immigration must decrease. The volume of aliens enticed to immigrate, under the law or against the law, is too great. The system is too open-ended, creating countless opportunities for fraud and abuse. Overall legal immigration quotas should be halved, at least. The statutory capitation is supposed to be about 700,000; about 300,000 a year more closely resembles America’s historical average.

About 200,000 to 300,000 immigrants a year must be set with a ‘hard’ cap; no one should be exempt from the cap. The maximum level should include refugees and asylees, as well as immigrants and their nuclear family members. Every fifth year should be a sabbatical year, in which no new immigrant visas are accepted or processed. Rather, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security should use this respite to ensure immigrant accountability and to ferret out fraud and abuse.”

Feb. 2006