David Brooks: Immigration System Has Been 'Overflooded'

David Brooks, a New York Times columnist

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During ‘PBS NewsHour’ on Friday David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, attributed high immigration levels as a root cause of the Brexit vote and that similar attitudes can be found in the U.S. He said, “I’m as pro-immigration as the day is long, but we’ve asked a lot of people who are suffering in this economy to accept extremely, radically high immigration levels. And we’ve probably overflooded the system.”

Brooks continued that the Brexit vote, where British citizens voted in favor of the referendum to leave the European Union, was brought on by the elites themselves. “The elites in some large degree brought them — this on themselves…a little humility is in order on the part of the establishment, frankly, that we’ve flooded the system with more than it can handle,” Brooks said in the segment.

This is a different tone from the columnist who last year wrote that Hillary Clinton’s open immigration approach, “is clearly the right one”. He also called immigration an easy problem and said that open immigration policies, “have always been good for America”.

He began to change his tone at the beginning of this year when he acknowledged that low-skilled immigration may be too high. “Reducing the supply of unskilled immigrants may do something to raise the wages of unskilled natives and ease their legitimate concerns,” Brooks wrote this past February.

Read more on this story and watch the PBS NewsHour clip on Brietbart.com.

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Low-skilled Americans