http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,148452,00.html

Immigration and Unintended Consequences...
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
By Bill O'Reilly

Hi. I'm Bill O'Reilly reporting from Southern California. Thanks for watching us tonight.

Immigration and the unintended consequences of it. That is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo."

The Census Bureau (search) has released new information about how many people are coming to the USA. We'll give you the stats in a moment.

But the bigger question is: How does immigration affect you and me?

Here in L.A., immigrants are everywhere. They make the city more vibrant.--There's no question about that.

But there are problems as well. Many foreign-born people work in the service industry, and, generally speaking, the service is not good.

Last night, for example, I had to take a car to Universal City. The driver didn't speak English, didn't know where he was going. We got lost, 35 minutes driving around. Finally, I had to get out of the car, grabbed a ecurity officer, and she actually had to get inside the car and direct us to the location using sign language.

Now, I felt sorry for the driver. He was a nice guy just trying to make a living, but he had no clue.

The point is that whenever you have a huge influx of people in any situation, there are going to be problems.

"Talking Points" has said many times that America is a place of hope for millions of people all over the world. We should not shut out immigrants, but there must be discipline imposed on the immigration process. Right now, chaos is in the air.

The Census Bureau says that, in the last four years, about six million new people, both legal and illegal, have come into this country. Incredibly, the Census Bureau doesn't know how many are legal or illegal. It doesn't keep track of that.

Now I believe the number of immigrants who have come in here the last four years is much higher, and that's based on Border Patrol stats and government entitlement spending.

There's no question that the immigration situation is changing the country. Latin Americans now are 53 percent of the foreign-born population, a huge number, and Hispanics have overtaken African-Americans in population.

That's why the border hasn't been controlled. Both parties do not want to alienate Hispanic voters.

Uncontrolled immigration influences salaries, voting patterns, welfare payments, crime, real-estate values and scores of other things. The USA is changing drastically because of immigration, and the politicians have no idea what the unintended consequences of this situation will be, and that is a very, very frightening scenario.

And that's "The Memo."