Immigration

One of the hottest topics of discussion in the last year or so has been immigration. The focus has been mostly on illegal immigration but I see a lot of negative feeling about legal immigrants as well. This is probably because most folks are fuzzy about the difference.

I have received many widely circulated e-mails telling me the great net cost of immigration over the benefits. I find the basic premise hard to believe because I know that this nation grew great and strong from the large waves of immigrants that came here from war torn strife all over the world. Indeed my own grandparents came to these shores running from the ravages of World War 1 (father's side) and the Czarist Pogroms in Russia (mother's side).

What is different now from that time, 90 or so year ago when my grandparents arrived? There was no welfare state in America then. Immigrants came here with the expectation to work but here they would get to keep the product of their work and could make a life for themselves and their children. They did not expect any handouts and none were given. They formed mutual help organizations with other immigrants from the same town in the "Old Country", called friendship or benevolent societies. This is how they took care of widows and orphans in the early years. In the later years, these organizations turned into burial organizations and have largely disappeared since our society offers other means (life insurance) to deal with those problems.

Today, we have developed a massive welfare state in the US that has bad effects in every aspect of our lives. First of course we have the huge tax rates, collected mostly by a progressive income tax that is clearly designed to prevent any new upstart wealthy families. The way to progress in a capitalist society is education, get a good job and earn a high salary, accumulate wealth to invest in a business and become wealthy. The progressive income tax breaks that chain when you start earning a high salary. It starts sucking your money up and prevents the capital accumulation phase. It should be no surprise that the progressive income tax was invented by Karl Marx and was a prime feature of the Communist Manifesto.

But I digress. I will state unequivocally that open immigration is not compatible with the welfare state. The welfare state tends to attract those who would benefit from it rather than workers who want to make their own way.

So we know from experience that immigration with no welfare state is a positive good and that the welfare state is damaging to the productive people in society. I will be so bold as to say that the welfare state is evil. It depends on continual organized theft from the productive to the non-productive members of society (immigrants or native born).

So what is the correct (moral) position for a freedom loving Libertarian? Should we accept the evil welfare state as an unchangeable fact of nature like a mountain or an earthquake , that we have to learn to live with and rant about immigrants using that welfare state. I say NO.

We should respect the rights of individuals, no matter what geographical area they were born in, to freely interact with any other individual on a voluntary basis. The demise of the welfare state should be the goal of our activities.

Let's solve two problems at once

Everyone is all upset about the large number of illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, that live in our nation.

I, being a leading edge member of the baby boom generation, worry about not getting the social security benefits that I paid dearly for during the last 40 years. We boomers apparently did not have enough children to support us through payroll taxes on the working generation.

Here is a suggestion that would solve both problems.

The reason that Mexicans come here without visas is that there is a quota limiting the number of immigrants per year. There is a waiting list of 16 years to come in legally from Mexico. Let us open the quotas up and let, for example all able bodied Mexicans between the ages of 20 and 40 come in legally, get all the needed permits, visas and social security cards. Then they can openly take jobs, pay taxes, open bank accounts and everything else that any American can do. Ten or twenty million productive, tax paying additional citizens just might put off the social security collapse by several decades.

To be honest, we would have to warn them that they have little chance of collecting social security benefits that they will have paid for. Us boomers will be taking that money, but they just might want to come anyway.