Comments Elsewhere

PJGoober:

For all the libertarian commenters, you need to recognize the negative externalities imposed by tons of poor immigrants due to the welfare state, and then realize that the welfare state is probably never ever going away. I’m choosing my battles wisely, and ending massive unskilled immigration seems more doable.

The existence of the welfare state is not immigrants’ fault, and in point of fact they are able to take considerably less advantage of it (especially if they don’t have their papers) than any new brat born to upstanding U.S. citizens. So why are you willing to take it out on immigrants but not on elderly citizens drawing Social Security checks, suburban kids getting a government-funded education, American citizens drawing TANF, WIC, food stamps, SSI? American farmers drawing agriculural subsidies or American business owners taking grants and loans from the Feds?

All of these people are imposing “negative externalities” on their neighbors by means of government programs, yet I see no proposals for rounding up the urban poor, deporting the disabled, putting the elderly into “detention centers,” or building guarded barricades to block surburban kids from getting to the government schools. It is only immigrants that you’re willing to forcibly restrain, beat, shoot, confine, and exile from their current homes (all at further taxpayer expense, mind you; “enforcement” is not any more free than welfare benefits are), in order to make some inroads on the negative externalities being imposed by a welfare state that they played no role in creating. Why? Because, apparently, they are politically vulnerable and you have no trouble using government force against innocent third parties when you feel it’s more politically expedient to do so than working to change or resist the system that robs you in the first place.

That is, frankly, despicable.