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Hillary Clinton displayed uncharacteristic prescience in a recent interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, in which she accurately diagnosed unchecked immigration as the catalyst that has led to an upsurge in populism and nationalism throughout Europe and, indeed, the world. Her comments sparked a firestorm of criticism from the left, which generally favors an open borders approach.
The former presidential candidate noted that “I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.”
The truth can be hard to hear for unreceptive ears: particularly those ears of the globalist technocrats in Brussels who want to subjugate European nation-states entirely under their control. For this elitist class, open borders is the answer, national sovereignty is an after thought, and political leaders like Italy’s Giuseppe Conte and Hungary’s Viktor Orban are dangerous demagogues seeking to fan the flames of virulent bigotry.
Immigration is the defining issue of our time. For libertarians it is a complicated one, that often splits our intellectual community in half. Open borders and an open labor market are fundamentally libertarian ideas. There is wonder-working power in the concept of the world’s teeming masses seeking out a better life in Western Europe, or North America, or East Asia.
One can hardly fault those from the world’s most deprived and repressive countries for their desire to live in social, economic, and political freedom. However, there is a 500 pound elephant in the room: the welfare state.
As long as a massive and bloated social safety net, which soaks up a nation’s productive resources while depriving its citizens of half their income, continues to exist, the open borders notion is dead in the water. Milton Friedman, arguably the greatest economist in a generation, put it succinctly: “It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”
It is obvious, even to the global elitist technocrats of the Democratic Party and the European center-left. The reality of the matter is that they do not care. They do not care about the massive fiscal cliff before us. They do not care about skyrocketing public debt, radically increased budgets for social spending, and lax controls which allow both legal and illegal immigrants to reap the benefits of a system, into which they have never contributed.
Libertarians and conservatives would generally be in favor of a modest immigration proposal: immigrants should have a job, pass a criminal background check, speak the language of their target country, and not expect to rely on the social safety net.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. In California, for example, 72% of immigrant households are using some type of welfare. Yikes! That should serve as a ringing endorsement of everything that Donald Trump has been saying all along about the dangers of not taking in the “best and brightest.”
Don’t expect to hear this narrative in the mainstream media, however. To the statist hacks, the Statue of Liberty is an homage to immigration, the plaque written on it is our official immigration law, and human beings anywhere for whatever reason have the right to immigrate to the United States at any time. Borders are just imaginary lines, nations are not sovereign, and questioning the new world immigration order is racist.
The statists also fail to realize that countries like the United States can afford to be supremely selective when it comes to immigration. Like our northern neighbors in Canada, the United States should implement a point-based system; a meritocracy that ensures that those who emigrate to the United States are able to support themselves, without relying on our already-overburdened social safety net.
Immigrants that come to the United States seek to create wealth. That is understandable. The billionaire class, led by the likes of Warren Buffet, Tom Steyer, and George Soros, is often leading the charge on open borders. They are sympathetic to those who seek economic freedom, we are led to believe.
But is it a love of capitalism that motivates a caravan of 14,000 Hondurans to arrive to the Rio Grande?
Clearly not those who were chanting Marxist slogans en route, including: “The land belongs to those that work it.”
It does?
That was the rallying cry of the Stalin-backed Communists during the Spanish Civil War. That was the rallying cry of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. That was the rallying cry of Mao during the Cultural Revolution.
Give us stuff for free! Redistribute wealth! Upend an unjust economic system!
Here is my modest proposal: if billionaires like George Soros believe in open borders, they should put their money where their mouth is, and fund a social safety net for recently-arrived immigrants while they get off their feet.
Some of the Honduran migrants have recently demanded $50,000 from the United States government to head back to Central America.
Why doesn’t George Soros offer $50,000 per migrant family…so that they can either enjoy a better life in their home country, or emigrate to the United States to work.
Provided that they qualify under the immigration criteria I’ve previously established, I have no problem with some Honduran migrants entering the United States to work. But the US taxpayer should not be footing the bill for the social safety net of citizens from other countries. Perhaps George Soros would be willing to foot the bill. He can certainly afford it.
