Dear prospective immigrant,

Thanks for the offer, but we have plenty of highly-skilled workers in the US already. Unless you're a medical doctor, that is.

Cheers!

The Unemployed (and Forgotten) Masses

(Note: I'm not unemployed, but was for a several months until earlier this year.)

If we stopped illegal immigration, we would have far more room for high skills legal immigrants.

Highly-skilled, legal immigrants and ostensibly low-skilled, illegal immigrants are two different groups of people with different motivations. Low-skilled immigrants contribute to different kinds of jobs (e.g. agriculture, construction, domestic work) than the ones highly-skilled, legal immigrants do. A family swimming across the Rio Grande, trying to escape destitution in Venezuela, probably isn't going to take a programming job from the man or woman from India, who came to the US on a work visa.

How does that work exactly?