On November 23, Real Clear Markets posted a silly article, Immigration Reform Is a Painless Way to Reduce Deficit, by one Arlene Holen, "a senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute [and] a former official of the Congressional Budget Office and the White House Office of Management and Budget."

The gist of the article, which reads as if Holen was born yesterday, is captured in these four sentences:

Deficit reduction - cutting expenditures and raising taxes - typically involves pain for some significant constituency. Occasionally, however, one finds a way to reduce the deficit that avoids pain. Letting in more high-skilled immigrants is one such way. Admitting more workers with skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM fields) can make a substantial contribution toward needed deficit reduction without raising taxes or cutting spending, while at the same time boosting growth and productivity.

All those hotshot immigrants, you see, will be big-time earners whose taxes will take a significant bite out of future deficits.  (Never mind the native-born American STEM workers who will lose jobs to the inevitable cheap-labor onslaught and thus pay lower taxes or maybe even become net consumers of taxes as they go on food stamps, etc.)

So, writing as "Paul137," I added the leadoff comment to the Holen article and then later some replies to others' comments.  (Why the "137"?  It's a number that's significant for physicists!)  As usual, I tried to offer information and some sources and to do so in a snark-free manner.

Someone named "Delmar Jackson" replied to me, adding a useful  point about the EB2 visa program, including, "The EB2 visa is for exceptional talent, education or ability and allows the immigrant to bring in his entire family. However, the immigrant has to PROVE he is exceptional, not just have a note from his mom and immigration attorney."

That bit at the end about "a note from his mom and immigration attorney" is pretty great.  But Jackson wasn't finished.  In a subsequent note that started with another reply to me, Jackson waxed eloquent about VDARE and its importance regarding the national question, describing himself up front as a "democrat and liberal." 

So instead of my telling you to "read the whole thing," here it is (with its few typos fixed):

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your reply.

For some reason I have never spent much time on CIS or FAIR, but am a member of Numbersusa and fax my Washington representatives regularly, and am a daily reader of vdare.

I am a democrat and liberal on many issues, and became interested in immigration over the environmental aspect. I looked in vain for a long time to find any group that was for the logical reduction of immigration. I discovered vdare from a smear story on it that was cited by the SPLC as a hate group on immigration. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.

I have learned more about immigration from vdare and its many contributors than from any other source, and its thorough and accurate stories with cited sources and links has made the mainstream media with its worshipping of all immigrants and all immigration all the time and the preaching the Holy gospel of diversity and Multiculturalism while smearing all who oppose seem even more Orwellian.

There are some vdare contributors I am not comfortable with, but I can say the same about NPR or my local public TV current affairs programs, however vdare and numbersusa has been like a rock to hold onto with its unwavering focus on immigration that will benefit our citizens first, not the immigrants or more importantly, those that hire them.

By reading vdare, I knew that when the president said illegals will not get free health care in his bill, that he was indeed lying, as all of the strict verification and eligibility requirements had been removed from it twice. I also learned about Cesar Chavez marching to the border in 1968 to protest illegal workers when he was trying to form the UFW union. I also learned about how we were lied to when the 1965 immigration act was passed, how we were lied to in 1986 when Reagan was told he was only giving amnesty to about 300,000 not 3 million as it turned out and we would never get the enforcement to prevent future amnesties as promised.

I learned about how many immigrants now come with territorial or religious grievances against us, unlike earlier migrants. I learned how the hate speech laws in Europe have destroyed the public's ability in Europe to speak out in public about immigration. I learned about how president Eisenhower, in "Operation Wetback" by simply enforcing immigration laws, made 3 million self deport. Nowadays if we use the term "wetback" we could be guilty of a crime as it is considered so offensive a word, and any talk of self-deportation is considered itself a crime against immigrants and we are scolded if we even dare use the term "illegal alien."

I have also learned from vdare how immigrants, both legal and illegal, are truly not the problem, they are symptom, and the main problem is our fellow citizens who profit from immigrants, and then pass on all the social,economic and environmental costs to our communities. And finally, I also learned from vdare how the Sierra Club was paid over 100 million to never talk about the environmental cost from massive immigration and how it eliminated most members that cared about reducing immigration.

I would have learned none of these facts from the mainstream media.

Paul, there are so many against us. The pro endless unlimited immigration side has the media, the academics, the Democrat and GOP leadership, the leadership of every religious group, the environmental leaders, the union leaders, the billionaires and globalists, the cheap-labor lobby and the libertarians that want to bankrupt social programs they hate via massive immigration, and the ethnic advocates that want more power and control and who despise assimilation, and the smug liberals who are like I used to be who wear a moral crown feeling they care more for the "others" while ignoring the working poor here now.

The only people on our side is the historical native-born people, the country, the bitter clingers, that is watching the elite import a new and different people that have no historical or social or cultural or even linguistic connection to the nation, and will be more easily led and lied to than us.

Thanks for fighting.

[Link about Sierra Club added by PN]