Open Immigration Is Good for ‘Business’… Depending on What You Mean by ‘Good’ or ‘Business’

by
Steve MacDonald
What language barrier
What language barrier?

At SteynOnline, Mark opines on claims that the benefit of an open immigration policy outweigh the cost.

Because culture trumps economics. If you’re a Swede who likes living in Sweden what would you rather forego? The 0.0035 of spectacular gangbusters economic growth? Or the mosques and the honor killings and the no-go areas and the cross-cultural rape epidemic?

The 0.0035 percent growth comes from 2008 estimate based on allowing the workforce to swell by (as few as) 14 million new immigrants. Not much benefit, and as the argument goes, is it worth the cost to the culture? Probably not. And certainly not after the progressive policy experts in the political class took the long-knives of Keynesian economics to the employment picture. Change we can believe in has taken us back in time to a Leroy Neiman 1970’s retrospective of the US labor force.

What is the answer to the question of what to do with a 21st century population that has a 1970’s workforce participation rate? Keep the immigrants coming! The welfare party is just getting started!

c/o USA Today via SteynOnline

About 51% of immigrant-led households receive at least one kind of welfare benefit, including Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches and housing assistance, compared to 30% for native-led households, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for lower levels of immigration.

Those numbers increase for households with children, with 76% of immigrant-led households receiving welfare, compared to 52% for the native-born.

The experts would like the declining number of American taxpayers to do their best impression of Giles Corey from The Crucible. When queried on open borders, out of control refugee resettlement, or shadows teeming with illegal immigrants, the proper response is printed on the cue card proffered by the nearest well-heeled member of the political class, “more weight.”

So the ‘more-immigration-is-good-for-your-economy’ argument only stand up to scrutiny if by “good” you mean wasting resources on a bureaucracy whose “business” requires an expanding base of welfare-recipients to justify its existence. We pile the bureaucrats next to the illegal immigrants, jobless citizens, young or unskilled workers displaced into unemployment by ludicrous minimum wage policy, and so on. More weight!

Until that greedy capitalist bastard is dead. But then what?

America will have been transformed.

but it is not progress to pay a bureaucrat a full-time salary (with benefits) to take food from another persons mouth or money from their wallet to give to whoever lines up outside their door; while kneecapping the means by which these resources are available to plunder in the first place. And it is neither kinder nor gentler of you to take in every stray the globe can offer on the premise that there will always be one more cupboard that’s not yet bare.

The American people know this is failed policy. It is why they are rushing to support Donald Trump when he speaks to the problem. This is neither mean nor bigoted. It is a desire to preserve the culture that made a nation capable of lifting anyone interested in working hard and using their God given gifts to find their own definition of success. If we allow the political class to destroy it we will suffer, but so will every future generation of immigrants who will no longer have any place to which they might escape.

Whether this is a vote-getting scheme, tied to tipping point politics, or just plain old ignorance and stupidity tens of millions will suffer and lady liberty will need to change her words.

Take back your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to live for free, The wretched refuse of our teeming shore. Take these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, my lamp’s burned out, we had to pawn the golden door!

In related news, if you were concerned that transgender or intersex illegal immigrant children could be at increased risk for sexual abuse or harassment (while being housed in the US at your expense), HHS spent gobs of your money to come up with “long overdue” guidelines because congressional Democrats demanded it.

I know I’m sleeping more soundly.

Author

  • Steve MacDonald

    Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, blogger, and a member of the Board of directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor of GraniteGrok.com, a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

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