I mean we must act with intelligence. We must work on this framework so that immigration becomes an asset to both nations. Believe me what - just the Mayor Bloomberg said here in New York that this city would be stopped totally stopped if it were not by the immigrants working here.

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.

To the former child migrants who came to Australia from a home far away led to believe this land would be a new beginning when only to find it was not a beginning but an end an end of innocence - we apologise and we are sorry. To the mothers who lost the maternal right to love and care for their child - we apologise and we are sorry.

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.

In Illinois community migrant homeless and public housing health centers operate 268 primary care sites and serve close to 1 million patients every year.

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.