Who’s Behind Open Borders?

“You can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”

So argued the very late Milton Friedman.

We believe there is vast justice in his claim.

If the world’s impoverished swamp a nation’s shores — and are thrown upon public relief — they impose impossible burdens upon the nation.

Yet the government of the United States is out to disprove old Milton… evidently.

Both free immigration and a welfare state are its apparent objective.

The sitting administration has thrown the nation’s borders open to the world’s masses, huddled and unhuddled.

Millions upon millions have barreled in from all corners of Earth.

How many millions? 10? 20? More?

We have encountered varying guesses.

Those processed by the United States Border Patrol, so-called, are handed a debit card, a cellular phone and an air ticket to the destination of their choosing.

Upon arrival thereat they are quartered and maintained at public expense.

Reports indicate illegal migrants cost United States taxpayers $450 billion per year.

Here we find Mr. Friedman’s admonition validated and affirmed.

“Sink or swim,” the United States government once told the huddled Ellis Island masses. “You will receive no assistance from us.”

“How can we help you?” the United States government asks the Rio Grande caravans.

We have no heat against the migrants themselves. Many are simply fleeing the outhouse in pursuit of the penthouse.

Confronting identical circumstances your editor would likely accept the invitation. So, he hazards, would you.

Yet Mr. Friedman stands vindicated: “You can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”

Why is the United States government doing it?

We are told it is economically healthy. Immigration inflates the gross domestic product and spawns wealth.

Does it?

Reports the Center for Immigration Studies:

The National Research Council estimated a net lifetime fiscal drain of $89,000 (1996 dollars) for an immigrant without a high school diploma, and a net fiscal drain of $31,000 for an immigrant with only a high school education…

If illegal immigrants were legalized and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the annual net fiscal deficit would increase to $29 billion, or $7,700 per household at the federal level.

So much for illegal immigration. What about legal immigration? Is it not a pure blessing?

Once again the Center for Immigration Studies:

The National Research Council estimated in 1996 that immigrant households (legal and illegal) create a net fiscal burden (taxes paid minus services used) on all levels of government of $11.4–20.2 billion annually…

Illegal immigrants with little education are a significant fiscal drain, but less educated immigrants who are legal residents are a much larger fiscal problem because they are eligible for many more programs. 

Thus a question dangles in the air: Why is the United States government doing it?

“Democrats want open borders because they see poor migrants as future voters” comes the standard refrain.

We believe it is very heavily true. Yet is a deeper purpose behind it?

We are reluctant to reach for our tinfoil headwear. We are suspicious of claims that invisible, sinister forces exercise dominion over the world’s affairs.

Yet even your editor, in his private moments, entertains questions.

At times we wonder if the Cloward-Piven strategy is in operation. The Cloward-Piven strategy, says Wikipedia, is:

A political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The strategy aims to utilize “militant anti-poverty groups” to facilitate a “political crisis” by overloading the welfare system via an increase in welfare claims, forcing the creation of a system of guaranteed minimum income and “redistributing income through the federal government.”

More:

Michael Reisch and Janice Andrews wrote that Cloward and Piven “proposed to create a crisis in the current welfare system — by exploiting the gap between welfare law and practice — that would ultimately bring about its collapse and replace it with a system of guaranteed annual income. They hoped to accomplish this end by informing the poor of their rights to welfare assistance, encouraging them to apply for benefits and, in effect, overloading an already overburdened bureaucracy.”

That is, overwhelm existing systems, collapse them and replace them.

Are there lever-pullers within the sitting administration employing mass migration to advance the Cloward-Pivens strategy?

We do not know the answer. And we do not propose that one exists.

Yet a plot would explain… much.

Thus we begin to entertain dangerous and seditious thoughts.

Yet we had best leave our tinfoil headwear on its rack — else we begin to question the United States government itself.

About COVID for example. About Ukraine for example. About elections for example.

And we would never question the United States government…