Re: Michael Stubblefield’s Dec. 3 letter, "Fewer immigrants would mean more jobs for U.S. residents":

American couples average fewer than the 2.1 children required to sustain the population. If we closed our borders, population would dwindle. Towns and even cities would evaporate as companies move or go out of business. No one to buy your products. No one to work in your company. No company to give you a job. No teacher to teach your children.

You join a group of bandits just to protect your family from nomadic marauders beset with the same problem--plunderers who move from one broken town to the next.

According to Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations Population Division, decreasing fertility is a world trend. It’s interesting to note that religion seems unrelated since Italy and Spain have the lowest fertility rates. Nothing has changed from earlier American history.

Immigrants are America’s greatest asset. Cherish those strong individuals who love this country enough to leave family, culture and homeland behind in order to brave language challenges, new culture and immigrant bashing. Other than Native Americans, most of us don’t need to go back very far in our lineage to realize that such brave people are our