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Article: Out of the Shadows.(illegal aliens and social policy, United States and Europe)
- Article from:
- Newsweek International
- Article date:
- August 13, 2001
- Author:
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When the writer H. G. Wells visited the United States at the turn of the 20th century, he was astonished at the native enthusiasm for immigrants. "Let them all come!" one elderly Yonkers resident exhorted the perplexed Briton. "We can do with them all..." Wells spent the rest of his stay trying to make Americans "understand the apprehension with which this huge dilution of the American people with profoundly ignorant foreign peasants filled me."
Wells was a futurist, but he got it all wrong on immigration. Today, facing global competition for labor talent and dwindling populations, the governments of Europe are increasingly willing to envision their future ...