Immigrants - America's Special Sauce

A guy I like to read, Fred Wilson, wrote an interesting post about immigration reform that I wanted to reiterate and perhaps expand upon. Fred's characterization of our history as a nation that welcomed immigration as our "special sauce" is dead on.  While I am well aware that immigrants increase the costs our governments must bear to serve the population and that these new immigrants may take some jobs that the descendants of prior immigrants might want, I think strong evidence exists that on the whole, we descendants of prior immigrants are better off with new immigrants following our family's footsteps.  The reason we are better off is emigrating to the US is not, nor ever has been, an easy thing.  It seems to me that the people that accomplish this feat are probably smarter and more determined than your average Joe.  This powerful natural selection process is factor our nation cannot afford to overlook.If you examine who are the people behind many of the most important advancements in business and technology in the last century, you will find immigrants or the children of immigrants.  People like Sergey Brin, born in Moscow, or Albert Einstein, born in Germany, just to name two.  You could make a really long list, pretty fast if you thought about it.Do we want the next generation of smart and industrious people to find that someplace else is more welcoming of their talents?  While the plaque on our Statue of Liberty may state "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses".  The reality has been "Give us your strong and your smart masses".  The weak and the lazy tend to stay home.  Let's not let our fear of terrorism keep us from killing the golden goose.