A good book on the immigration issue is Alien Nation by … an immigrant! — from England, one Peter Brimelow. See http://www.vdare.com/alien_nation

As this article states:

“‘They come here as professionals, most often in the H-1B program, and given the fluctuations of Silicon Valley, the business climate, these guys lose their jobs. They get laid off or they wager their hands on a start-up coming in,’ Jack said. ‘The problem with the H-1B program is, you can’t have any significant time between jobs” without falling out of legal status.’”

http://escapefromindia.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/indian-illegal-immigrants-in-us-numbers-jumped-125-since-2000/

The anti-immigration groups in the US have done a good job at masquerading as anti-illegal immigrants. But FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA are anti-immigration across the board. For instance, Mark Krikorian Executive Director of CIS, wrote a book entitled KEEP THEM OUT: THE CASE AGAINST ILLEGAL AND LEGAL IMMIGRATION.

What’s even odder, and was exposed by Wall Street Journal journalist Jason Riley, was that these anti-immigrant groups have a radical environmentalist anti-human ideology behind them. Their founders advocate for a one-child policy and believe the population of the US should not be greater than 100 million.

The anti-immigration crowd has disguised themselves as “right of center” and anti-illegal immigrant. Both contentions are untrue.

But aren’t all of them “legal immigrants”?

I don’t think there were any anti-legal-immigrant sentiment in this country. It is rather against “illegal immigrant”.

Alberto Sangiovanni Vicentelli is not the founder of Synopsys. Aart de Geus is (look him up on Wikipedia). However, you can still put Synopsys in your “founded by immigrants” column; de Geus is Dutch, though he spent most of his youth i(and got his master’s degree) in Switzerland.

Prof. S-V has been going around taking credit for the accomplishments of his students, and his consulting role in the founding of Cadence and Synopsys, to the point where he is regularly (and falsely) credited as a founder. But you don’t found companies by sitting on the sidelines giving advice.

I think for all and any achievements of immigrants to the US, this stands alone as a prime example of immigration being important to the US…

Anyway. I want to raise a point about the illegal immigrants in America – they form the workforce that cleans the toilets and handles the garbage (among other things, of course). Economically it makes sense for companies to employ these kind of people, because they are cheap and disposable.