define "can"
What is straining to you? I would describe our education system, our legal system, our prison system and our welfare system as all being currently "strained" so we must have different definitions.
(and to the downvoting crew, feel free to explain to me what productive disagreeement looks like, eh?)
You've also made the mistake of thinking that just because you've found one problem that others must not exist. We can have broken systems and problems caused by immagration.
10% ESL students in our public education system should qualify as a strain. 17% of California's prisoners being born abroad should qualify as a strain. Are these numbers not high enough for you? If not, what does too high look like to you?
A 10% ESL student population doesn't solve itself. That's like a child thinking that their refrigerator magically fills itself when it gets empty. If you ignore that solutions have costs than yes by your definition ESL students have no costs associated with them.
I asked about the strain on the legal system due to immigrant populations, specifically the prison system in California. You said we should put less people in jail. While that's true it doesn't solve the problem unless we're going to change our laws to the extent that aggravated assault is no longer a crime. Then we've once again solved the problem by refusing to admit it even exists.
As of 2006, 49.3% of state prisoners, or 656,000 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent crimes.
By 2010, drug offenders in federal prison had increased to 500,000 per year, up from 41,000 in 1985. Drug related charges accounted for more than half the rise in state prisoners. 31 million people have been arrested on drug related charges, approximately 1 in 10 Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
Only 10% of California's prisoners have never been convicted of a violent crime. I doubt they all need to be locked up but I'm not seeing those prisons as being filled with peaceful drug dealers like the rumor has it.
I would guess in New Hampshire there isn't much of an immigrant population. I just looked it up and it's about 93% white there. My state's about 2/3's white, I live in a part of town where I don't walk around after dark because I might get jumped for being white which does affect my perspective. I have neighbors who immigrated from Mexico decades ago and still don't even speak basic english. I'm not saying my state should become all white or anything like that, but maybe we've reached a good mix and we could deal with the problems our hispanic and black communities already have because that's a challenge as it is. We're struggling to get them to stop killing each other, make it through high school and to read at a basic level. If we can't do that I don't know why we think we can take on even more people.
19% of high school graduates in the US are functionally illiterate[0]. Nationwide only half of black males are graduating at all. Half. We're already failing to take care of our poor. We're spending a very large amount of money trying to but it happens to be expensive.
If you go back to the start of this thread you'll see I've been consistent that there's a point where taking in more people is no longer a good thing. That doesn't mean I think it's always a bad thing, just that we should be honest that it can be.
[0] - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3...
Second, my main assertion is the existence of a point where immigration is problematic. Example: colonialism.
Third, as to the side conversation of whether or not America is experiencing a problematic level of immigration I've already submitted the fact that 10% of students in US public schools are ESL learners. We can add to it that 16% of California's prisoners were not born on U.S. soil and they're so overcrowded the Supreme Court ordered them to do something about it. I'm calling these things "strain". I hope we can agree that immigration plays a role in both examples.