[Qgis-user] Finding the right PRJ file or CRS for my data?

[Bob DuCharme]

To summarize, when I use QGIS to add a layer with some points on it to a 
layer with a map, they don't show up in the right place. I'm new at GIS 
work (but enjoying QGIS!)

I got shapefile tl_2014_us_state.zip from 
https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles2014/main and loaded it 
into QGIS. Next, I used https://code.google.com/p/csv2shp/ to convert 
the following CSV file to an ESRI shapefile:

"lat","long","name"
40.712700,-74.005898,New York City
34.049999,-118.250000,Los Angeles

it creates all the necessary files except for the PRJ file. I tried 
copying the PRJ file from shapefile tl_2014_us_state for the generated 
data and loaded that layer, and I see dots for the two cities, but far, 
far away from the US, and one of the dots looks north of the other 
instead of east of it.

Here is that PRJ file. I'm guessing that I should be using a different 
Coordinate Reference System, but I have no idea which and how to specify it:

GEOGCS["GCS_North_American_1983",DATUM["D_North_American_1983",SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137,298.257222101]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],UNIT["Degree",0.017453292519943295]]

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Bob