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Immigration is as much about the American experience and the values we share, and a lot more about economics than it is about politics.

People end up fleeing countries who adopt economic policies based on these flawed principles. And more often than not, they come here.

Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States' policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now.

And they do those jobs not because they want to take away anything from America, but because they want to give their skills, their sweat, their labor, for a better life and to help build a better America, just as those who came before them.

Increasingly, Americans don't own America.

America is fickle. You never know what they're going to go for.

I'm in England so often I haven't really left, but Americans aren't at all like they're misrepresented through their politicians.

As America has grown less economically equal, a citizen's ability to move upward has fallen behind that of citizens in other Western democracies. We are no longer the country where anyone can become anything.

Foreign policy is something Americans care about when the economy is good, and when it isn't, they hardly notice it. It's hard to worry about what happens in the Mideast when you don't have a job in the Midwest.

Although it requires some adjustment by those already here, immigration has made the U.S.A. the most prosperous nation on Earth.