“Immigration Reform” Means: More Freebies, More Power

We’ve heard a lot about the ineptitude of the federal government’s now infamous “healthcare.gov.”

But have you checked out the page informing soon-to-be-legal immigrants of the freebies awaiting them upon citizenship? Click on: WelcometoUSA.gov and see for yourself. For those of you who pay taxes — you paid for this.

Depending on your immigration status, length of time in the United States, and income, you may be eligible for some federal benefit programs.

The website goes on to provide information about immediate access to: food stamps; SSI; Medicaid; Medicare; so-called temporary aid to families; etc. etc.

If you focus on the immigration “debate” long enough, it will eventually dawn on you that it’s not about immigration at all.

From the perspective of a free country, the merits of immigration would be a no-brainer. An economically free country would constantly be growing and expanding. As productive citizens acquired a higher standard of living with each passing decade, the economy would desperately require new, motivated workers to take on the less-skilled jobs everyone else had outgrown. Many of these low-skilled workers would, in a growing economy, eventually improve their standard of living as well.

We don’t live in a free economy today. We live in a severely hampered market economy, one becoming more hampered all the time.

In such a context, immigration becomes a threat — from a rational perspective. And in such a context, immigration becomes a value — from the perspective of ideological brother’s keeperism, i.e. Obama’s ideology.

The reason immigration becomes a threat, from a rational perspective, is that the economy is no longer growing, at least not like it might. Government constantly lowers the boom on business with high taxes and arbitrary regulations, based less on public “welfare” than on corporate political pull. In such a context, things are neither as fair nor as prosperous as they might have been. Society gradually slows down. Jobs become more limited. Government advocates of brother’s keeperism use this as an opportunity to say, “You see? I told you so. Capitalism is cruel and people are left behind. Increase those social programs immediately and indefinitely.”

From the brother’s keeperism perspective, this is Big Business, government-style. Not only does it achieve power and even money for some; it cloaks itself in the psychological power of morality.

From Obama’s own mouth:

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

The premise of this statement is that you have two options: Either be motivated by money alone, with no concept whatsoever of anything else but money; or you sacrifice yourself to something “larger than yourself.” Either be an amoral twit as business people are consistently portrayed by Hollywood; or be a self-sacrificial martyr who supports leftist economic policies.

Conveniently, the government stands ready not just to advocate this point-of-view, but to enforce it legally. Hence: high and “progressive” taxation; and indiscriminate, even outright lawless, immigration as now practiced by the Obama administration and our completely spineless Congress.

Here’s what passes as the conservative “alternative,” articulated in this case by the hapless conservative and perpetual border-state U.S. Senator John McCain in 2006: “We all know the parties that have attracted immigrants into this country have been the ruling parties,” he said. “It’s just a historical fact.”

Ruling parties? Who said anything about ruling — particularly by the Republican Party, who’s allegedly the party of limited government? It’s a rather interesting slip of the tongue on McCain’s part.

McCain, unlike his more consistent rivals on the other side of the issue, might not favor outright indiscriminate immigration. But by compromising with his opponents, the wobbly Republicans grant them all the victory they need. More immigrants flowing into the country where social welfare benefits are expanding at an unsustainable and arithmetically impossible rate to calculate means the ultimate virtuous cycle, from the point-of-view of brother’s keeperism.

Normally it would be left to Democrats to defend their policies by making the rational case for immigration — all the while evading that no such case exists in our stagnating transfer-of-wealth socialist democracy. But Democrats are spared the burden, thanks to Republicans like the pitiful former Florida governor Jeb Bush, whining and crying in public about how immigrants come to America as an “act of love,” and should be allowed to stay, benefits and all. Why doesn’t Jeb Bush insist on stopping immigration until we cut the budget; or allowing immigrants in immediately, but without welfare or other entitlements for which they haven’t paid? Because he’s just as much a “brother’s keeper” socialist, at heart, as his supposed opponent in the White House. This is why nothing ever changes.

The new American motto should be: Give me your Medicaid-eligible, your potential unemployment recipients and your future entitlement state-supporting voters. Let’s get them on food stamps, welfare, Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, disability and unemployment … pronto.

It’s not even the fault of immigrants personally. They’re entering a nation which no longer offers opportunity so much as bureaucracy, stagnation and dependence. The more of them come, the worse it will be for us — and for them. Economic freedom would resolve the issue for everyone. It would allow for far greater opportunity for immigrants (and citizens) willing to work, and nothing in the law would prevent voluntary charity. But no spokesperson for economic freedom is anywhere to be found, not in academia, the courts, or high elected office. Either they’re all socialists like Obama, or they’re simply moral cowards. It’s hard to determine which is worse.

Do advocates of immigration “reform” want immigrants? Of course the architects of institutionalized government dependence want more immigrants. They want as many people as possible invited to their party. It has nothing to do with immigration; it has everything to do with political power, along with the sense of moral superiority (they think) of supporting the convenient anarchy of Obama’s immigration “policy.”

John McCain, of all people, unwittingly admitted the ugly yet honest nature of the truth: When you pay people’s way, it’s your ticket to ruling them.

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