The old geezer argument

Here is an argument that says we need immigrants for a very important reason. We will soon become a nation of old geezers, in need of someone to bring us our iced tea and mow our yards.
Mary Sanchez of The KC Star writes:

To understand the demographic challenge before us, consider the baby boomers, that massive generation born roughly between 1946 and 1964. They are celebrated for revolutionizing every aspect of American life - how we learn, how we work, how we raise and educate children, how we regard sex and drugs. So get ready, the eldest of the boomers are beginning to retire.

And guess what? We don't have enough people to replace them in the labor force among native-born succeeding generations. Nor do we have enough low-wage workers to serve all their needs in retirement - and boomers are anticipated to be a highly active set of retirees, living both longer and with more demands on the economy than their parents ever called for.

(Congress) needs to put immigration reform back on the table. Far from the glib rhetoric that doomed the recent immigration reform bill on Capitol Hill, saner economists have argued that importing more workers is vitally necessary. In fact, in congressional hearings they talked themselves red, white and blue in the face about it. Granted, these arguments can be dry and abstruse, not nearly as thrilling as, say, the gloom-and-doom oratory of a Lou Dobbs or your average Minuteman. But what's really more important to the nation, ''cultural'' purity or economic well-being?

Someone has to take out the trash, mow the lawns, wash the dishes, pick the crops, paint the houses, cut up the pork loins and gut the chickens. In the end, all the huffing and puffing about non-existent ''illegal alien invasions'' won't alter the facts of birth and death. Baby boomers, you are aging. And how you spend your golden years depends in no small part on how we deal with immigration today.

TK: I agree with Sanchez - I would have liked more facts - but find fault with her tone. It is regrettable she injects the straw horse of "cultural" purity. Americans understand the need for workers to pick the crops, but they can't abide that the government so ceaselessly fails to control illegal immigration.