I didn't talk about your experience. My assertions were about real picture. If you don't believe it then you could study social statistics for urban areas, where most immigrants arrive. It might happen that you will notice that number of welfare program recipients is substantially higher in those areas.
Again, my major point was different, and for some reasons you ignored it. It is undeniable, imho, that immigrants of the past didn't receive government-sponsored social support at the point of arrival, and, imho again, this support is very essential factor driven immigration numbers in our times. It means that equating past immigrant history with today's realities is not correct both factually and ethically.

>I have lived and worked with immigrants, documented and undocumented. Your assertions regarding their motivations for coming here are contrary to my experience. The only distinction I have noticed is that the unlike the immigrants who populated the town in which I grew up (50% Polish, 30% French, and then the rest of us), we no longer welcome those who come to take our lowest paying jobs that those already here don't want.
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>Hank
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>>You overlook (deliberately, imho) one important distinction. People coming to America over last 2-3 centuries, did it under duress of oppression in their native countries and with resolution to work hard building their lives in new country. As you definitely know, they didn't get full assortment of social services at the point of arrival, i.e. whatever problems they had in their old countries, their initial status in America was even more challenging. As it stands now, the picture is totally different. Many people coming to America may immediately improve their well-being without working a day in this country. Moreover, if they even have vague desire to do something then there are plenty governmental and non-governmental (though financed by government grants) agencies teaching them how to milk the system in the most efficient way avoiding any semblance of hard work common to emigrants of the past. In my opinion, you make disservice to hard-working new Americans of all times by combing them together with handout recipients who had appeared quite recently, in historical terms, but whose numbers grow unproportionally to country ability to serve them.