Massive immigration will help make sure I get my social security...
Of course, the comment was jokingly flippant - it's not really a good reason to throw the borders open, though there are certainly more serious arguments on both sides of that debate.
The data includes both legal and illegal immigrants along with the minority high skilled immigrants.
http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011 implies that most of that welfare use is from low skilled immigrants and not high skilled ones that are the topic of interest of most HNers.
He presumably got downvoted because it is irrelevant at best and misdirection at worst (by combining illegal and legal data and claiming immigrants claim more welfare which makes it look like highly skilled immigrants claim more welfare).
As for the notion that most HNers are interested only in high-skilled immigrants rather than low-skilled ones, that may well be the case. But low-skilled immigrants certainly are interested in HNers, or rather the money that HNers possess.
I kinda suspected you will quote that! You realize that you cannot tie that to skilled immigrants as such right? For e.g. there is family based immigration, diversity visas and what not that could and does result in households with children comprised entirely of immigrants.
If one thing is clear - highly skilled immigrants are not taking your welfare. I have lived through it and encountered a lot of high skilled immigrants and have not even an anecdote to refer you to where someone was using welfare. I would be very surprised to see data that indicates H1Bs, EB-1/2/3s, F-1s etc. take significant part of welfare benefits.
What we will get: more welfare, more crime, more unemployment, more ethnic nepotism.
I don't see how asking for/having more skilled immigrants can possibly be linked to more crime, more unemployment or whatever. Unless you are speculating on what congress might do with immigration reform that will cause it or you want immigration to be completely stopped. (Not sure how that will work out given the illegals situation.)