Absent comprehensive entitlement reform, older Americans have a moral responsibility to support some measure of legal immigration to the United States.

Because without legal immigration, younger Americans face a future of punitively high taxes alongside lower entitlement benefits, just to support them in their old age. It is thus morally unacceptable for older Americans to oppose all immigration but demand their current entitlement benefits. That means retaining benefits (three times the return on an average taxpayer’s lifetime outlay), fueling the national debt crisis (hint: interest on the debt), but denying younger Americans the support to address that crisis.