A plan for America: more Macacas, please!

Two years ago, up-and-coming Republican George Allen threw away his political career when he called an Indian-American member of his audience a "Macaca." (The word, meaning "monkey," is a French slur for North Africans, which Allen learned from his French mother, who it turned out was a descendant of Sephardic North African Jews...'nuff said). Allen probably didn't even know that the kid was of Indian descent; he just saw a brown person and identified him as an "other."

After three decades of massive immigration - the most since the early 1900s - Americans are starting to get uneasy about immigrants again. Nativism has become a big undercurrent in the Republican party, with Fox News commentators issuing dark warnings about low Anglo fertility rates, and Minutemen manning the border.

The fact is, though, immigration is the only reason why America's long-term prospects - our "fundamentals," if you will - remain strong. Our fertility rate is 2.1, enough to keep our population stable, but not to prevent aging. The fact that we accept enough immigration to keep our young, working population growing is the main reason why we're in a stronger position than Japan, Europe, and other rich countries. And with China, with 4.5 times our population, in economic ascendancy, our young and growing population will be the only thing that makes us a better investment destination than them in the year 2020.

And here's another little-known fact: those Macacas are our best and brightest. Indian-Americans, like the one George Allen insulted, are the richest ethnic group in America. They are also the highest educational achievers. The CEO of Citibank, America's (and the world's) largest bank? An Indian (Vikram Pandit). (Also the CEOs of PepsiCo, Adobe, Vodafone, and plenty more).

As immigration from Mexico dries up (due to our slowing economy, border security, and Mexican economic growth), we are going to need people from somewhere in order to keep America growing and strong. We'll need both low-skilled immigrants to build our roads and houses, and high-skilled immigrants to program or computers and manage our companies. Poor countries like India, Vietnam, and the Philippines have huge populations bursting with eager, hard-working people just waiting for opportunity to become Americans. Even rich countries like Japan have hundreds of thousands who would love to join our ranks and taste the social mobility that American culture offers.

Let's invite them over.

And as for the nativist conservatives, they shouldn't worry. Not only will those immigrants learn English fast, they'll eventually assimilate racially and culturally as well. After all, American nativists warned us about Germans, Russians, Poles, Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Jews swamping and destroying our culture, and it didn't happen. In another generation, Hispanics will be just another bunch of white folks, worrying that their American heritage is about to be destroyed by hordes of foreign Macacas. And unfortunately, they'll probably start voting Republican.