On this issue I am to the left of Bernie Sanders and nearly everybody else. With very exceptions, I'd welcome any immigrant who wants to live in America to America.
Other than bigotry why are people worried about a small number of Afghans in America?
There is grumbling in some corners that the Afghanistan refugees may not have been properly vetted. What are they worried about? I doubt that the Islamic fundamentalist nuts are eager to leave their newly achieved Sharia law guided government to move to secular nation like ours. The people who were desperate to leave Afghanistan want what most Americans want: a chance to succeed financially and to enjoy freedoms they tasted while the Taliban was out of power.
Immigrants do more bootstrap pulling than most nativists who loudly advocate it.
Immigrants are much more likely to start businesses than the U.S.-born. The percentage of adults, both U.S.-born and immigrant, who became entrepreneurs in any given month during 2016, was .31 percent, or 310 out of every 100,000. The entrepreneurship rate for immigrants during the same time period was higher at .52 percent, about twice the rate of the U.S.-born (.26 percent).
John Lennon imagined what I imagine
Other than stopping some obviously dangerous criminals and few potential health risks at the border, I don't see any moral reason to stop nearly any would-be immigrant. We don't place limits on how many children a family can have. If we respect human rights we should give immigrants the same chance to a happy life as we give our native citizens.
Should there be any limitations? Barely.
I would demand that all immigrants should be vaccinated and be checked to be sure they weren't actively spreading a communicable diseases, but other than that, why should we stop anybody? I would suggest that we consider carefully if an immigrant's alleged criminal offense in their home country would be considered a crime in America. If somebody sneezed while in a Mosque, if they are gay or married outside their racial group those might be crimes in other parts of the world, but they aren't here. I also would be skeptical of the fairness of convictions in the sorts of countries that people are eager to leave.
For about 100 years America's open immigration policies weren't a problem until the racists took charge.
According to the USCIS, "Americans encouraged relatively free and open immigration during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and rarely questioned that policy until the late 1800s. After certain states passed immigration laws following the Civil War, the Supreme Court in 1875 declared regulation of immigration a federal responsibility. Thus, as the number of immigrants rose in the 1880s and economic conditions in some areas worsened, Congress began to pass immigration legislation.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labor laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the United States. The general Immigration Act of 1882 levied a head tax of fifty cents on each immigrant and blocked (or excluded) the entry of idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge.
These national immigration laws created the need for new federal enforcement authorities. In the 1880s, state boards or commissions enforced immigration law with direction from U.S. Treasury Department officials. At the Federal level, U.S. Customs Collectors at each port of entry collected the head tax from immigrants while 'Chinese Inspectors' enforced the Chinese Exclusion Act."
Inherently unfair immigration caps
Under the per-country cap set in the Immigration Act of 1990, no country can receive more than seven percent of the total number of employment-based and family-sponsored preference visas in a given year. These percentage caps obviously are to the disadvantage of Mexico with its large population and proximity. A resident of a low population nation like Iceland would never have to worry about exceeding the seven percent per county limit.