Immigration

"Mass immigration may be hard to combine with a generous welfare state, but this argument applies more to Europe than to America. In America it is hard for an able-bodied adult male to do anything more than subsist on welfare. So immigrants work, which means they are seldom much of a drain on the public purse [...] People who work together need to get on with each other, so they generally do.
Because immigrants have to work, America does not have ghettos full of permanently jobless and alienated young immigrants, as in France, for example. This is perhaps why, although America has a high murder rate - three times that of Britain- its immigrants, rarely riot. They are too busy earning a living."


extract from "A Ponzi scheme that works", The Economist, 12/19/2009 - 01/01/2010