I am sure if you are reading this, than you already read my commentary this morning where I take the Governor to task (as a supporter of his) for what he said at a campaign stop in La Mesa yesterday, "Never get mad at anyone that is trying to come to this country. I understand people wanting to be part of this state."

Over on his weblog, Sacramento Bee reporter Dan Weintraub had some thoughts after reading what I had to say:

My take is that illegal immigration, in and of itself, is a victimless crime. If people come here to work, which most illegal immigrants do, they are going to engage in a voluntary exchange of their labor for someone else’s money. They are not stealing, and, as a group, they are helping our economy, even if a few people at the lower end of the wage scale see their wages bid down. Illegal immigrants are also not harming legal immigrants or anyone "in line" to enter the country legally. The number of legal immigrants is set without any reference to the number who enter without documentation.

I wonder what I would do, or what Fleischman would do, if we had had the misfortune to be born poor on the "wrong" side of the border, and we knew there was opportunity in the United States to better our lives and the lives of our families. Would we simply ignore that opportunity? Or would we do everything we could to take advantage of it?
Or to offer a more extreme example, what if, next year, the courts ruled that blogs were not protected by the First Amendment, and the government outlawed them. Would Fleischman, out of a respect for "personal responsibility," simply stop trying to communicate his views in this way? Or would his sense of justice compel him to disobey that law, because his actions are not, in fact, harming anyone?

When the governor said we shouldn’t be "mad" at people who come here illegally, I don’t think he was talking about people who steal, or even people who take advantage of our welfare state. He was talking about people who come here for economic opportunity. I’m not mad at them, either.

Having had a few hours now to stew over the Governor’s comments, my own, as well as now Dan’s, I will add a few things.  First, I believe that the point the Governor is trying to make, as Dan points out, is that we should be welcoming with open arms all of those who want to come to California to work hard, and make it on their own.  But, of course, that is not what the Governor said.  This issue of illegal immigration is so emotionally-charged that everyone, especially the Governor, should say exactly what they mean.  His comments, verbatim, sure set me off this morning.

There are actually reasons why we don’t have open borders (as Dan would seemingly advocate).  The first is that immigration does have an impact on our country, and understanding and regulating the influx of people into the country is sound public policy (especially when we are talking about the impact of many, many millions if immigrants).  As I mentioned in my piece, we live in a modern welfare state.  That is to say that when you come to America, the ‘safety net’ here is much higher than in most other countries.  For practical purposes, your presence here gives you citizenship for children born here, access to welfare, to healthcare, to education, and to use of shared resources such as infrastructure, which are supported with public dollars.  Of course, the second issue which has really loomed large in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on America is the need to screen potential immigrants for security purposes.

As a pretty libertarian-thinking guy myself (note the small ‘l’ in libertarian), the idea of people coming here to make it on their own appeals to me very much.  "More is more," and our economy benefits from more economic stimulus (as the saying goes, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’).  But in a modern welfare state, massive undocumented and uncontrolled immigration into this country and state is hardly a ‘victimless crime’ – since money is taken from all taxpayers that then goes to support the subsidies of which I spoke.  Yes, it is a true statement that some come here to work, not to suck off of the public dole.  But isn’t it our responsibility, as a nation, to try and discourage, not encourage a process that keeps us from making affirmative decisions about who does and does not live here?  It is a responsibility that may even be a burden, and a growing one as we increase government subsidies to residents.

I think that illegal immigration is not a ‘victimless crime’ – both because our nation’s sovereignty is eroded with each foreign national that breaks our laws and because of the tremendous economic costs to all Americans to sustained ‘shared benefits’ of this illegal population.

If someone was willing to tell me that we could scale back the modern welfare state, then I would be happy to discuss a screening process for immigrants that would be virtually no more than a security check.

I don’t know if I am still mad – I certainly was when I ‘flamed out’ that commentary this morning.  I guess now I am just frustrated.  There is no easy solution to this problem, but I think that we should all start by agreeing on the basic idea that illegal immigration into a state with so many public subsidies is not a ‘victimless crime’ – it is the opposite, we are all victims (Yes, Dan, while you are thinking it, it is true that I believe that we are all victims of the effect of the modern welfare state – legal residents, too).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.