On the other hand, if you make it more feasible to immigrate legally, aren't you simply following a more open immigration policy anyway?

Immigration away from oppressive regimes to what *should* be a more free country is what this is all about. To keep making it more difficult for Lady Liberty to say “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” seems counter-intuitive at least to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm concerned about unsustainable trends and I think it is an issue, but we need to pull a Henry Hazlitt here and get to the bottom of the issue. The *State* is *always* the problem, not the innocent.

Regarding (1), how about we say instead that it’s just foolish to have a welfare state? Immigration is a good, but a welfare state is a bad. I don’t want to punish a good because a bad exists. On the contrary, I will focus ever more attention on eliminating the bad.

However, a welfare state does provide a perverse incentive in the “market for immigration,” which is why immigration is likely more rapid than it might be otherwise. But even if it were not, supply and demand would put an economic limitation on immigration so that it wouldn’t get too rapid. It would simply become too costly for everyone, and so only those who truly desired to live in the area (and those who would more likely hold to the general values of that area) would choose to immigrate in. Make sense?

In sum, I find it distasteful for the government to divert attention from REAL problems, i.e. the health-care/welfare/fiat money/warfare state, to the minor problem of immigration.

Regarding (1), how about we say instead that it’s just foolish to have a welfare state? Immigration is a good, but a welfare state is a bad. I don’t want to punish a good because a bad exists. On the contrary, I will focus ever more attention on eliminating the bad.

However, a welfare state does provide a perverse incentive in the “market for immigration,” which is why immigration is likely more rapid than it might be otherwise. But even if it were not, supply and demand would put an economic limitation on immigration so that it wouldn’t get too rapid. It would simply become too costly for everyone, and so only those who truly desired to live in the area (and those who would more likely hold to the general values of that area) would choose to immigrate in. Make sense?

In sum, I find it distasteful for the government to divert attention from REAL problems, i.e. the health-care/welfare/fiat money/warfare state, to the minor problem of immigration.

1. It is utterly foolish in a welfare state in spite of the benefits listed.

2. It is simply natural to desire stability in the communities we live in. Slow evolution is good. Some neighborhoods and small towns have been swamped by people of disparate cultures. They are not bad people, they just do not welcome change that is too great and too rapid. It seems only fair to be first concerned about the interests and feelings of indigenous people before we worry about the natural rights of immigrants. I would use the same argument if Germans were flooding into Sri Lanka.

1. It is utterly foolish in a welfare state in spite of the benefits listed.

2. It is simply natural to desire stability in the communities we live in. Slow evolution is good. Some neighborhoods and small towns have been swamped by people of disparate cultures. They are not bad people, they just do not welcome change that is too great and too rapid. It seems only fair to be first concerned about the interests and feelings of indigenous people before we worry about the natural rights of immigrants. I would use the same argument if Germans were flooding into Sri Lanka.