Humor has historically been tied to the mores of the day. The Yellow Kid was predicated on what people thought was funny about the immigrant Irish. When you're different in a society you're funny.

A recent Pew Hispanic survey found that more than 70 percent of illegal immigrants from Mexico are interested in a guest-worker program and then returning home.

We immigrants can sometimes sound a little hysterical about this because we come from places that have tried this and we know where it leads. Anybody who's lived in countries with socialized health care knows that it becomes the dominant political issue.

Illegal immigrants are beginning to comprise a black market class of workers in our society jeopardizing the financial health of companies which play by the rules while themselves vulnerable to the exploitation by those willing to take advantage of their illegal status.

In addition California spends nearly $1 billion a year in Medi-Cal services for an average of 780 000 illegal immigrants a month over and above emergency health services.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents and immigrants like them were known as '£10 poms.' Back then the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource - the future entrepreneurs upon whom economic growth depends. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation.

Somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the food you eat has been touched by immigrant hands and it is fair to say some of them are not here as they should be here. But if you didn't have these folks you would be spending a lot more - three four or five times more - for food or we would have to import food and have all the food security risks.

President Obama is doing the right thing by offering young immigrants most often in this country through no action of their own a chance to live and work openly free from the fear of deportation.

Uncertainty and fear and ignorance about immigrants about people who are different has a history as old as our Nation.