Immigration

Blogger Gus van Horn has published an excellent op-ed at Pajamas Media on the topic of the recent Arizona law on illegal immigration. Gus writes:

SB 1070 deserves only one fundamental criticism: It would fail to protect the individual rights of American citizens –even if it hermetically sealed our borders and the police never touched a single American hair in the process of enforcing it. This is because the biggest headaches attributed to illegal immigration are not caused by it at all.

The biggest headaches are the freebies as well as restrictive laws that the government provides and imposes. I commented on the article as follows:

Gus van Horn has it right! I appreciate that most of the people of Arizona are not racist and do not hate Hispanics but the net effect of their law is to impose an unjustifiable burden on anybody who will seem suspicious to the police. The problem, as Gus points out, is the number of freebies our government provides as well drug laws that generate crime, as well as laws that require the provision of services without pay, not illegal immigration as such. The freebies and laws create unnecessary but justifiable resentment. We should work to phase out these items so that no one pays for other people’s education or other service unwillingly and so that our freedoms are no longer restricted. Residency (though not citizenship, which should be a much longer process) should be an option available to all newcomers who want it, barring obvious infectious disease, or other danger to the public such as terrorism.

For a couple more detailed presentations of the rational case for immigration see the following:

Immigration Quotas vs. Individual Rights: The Moral and Practical Case for Open Immigration by Harry Binswanger

Immigration and Individual Rights by Craig Biddle

UPDATE 4/30/2010 8:20AM:
See also The Rights of Man, the Privileges of Citizen, a very good clarifying on this topic by blogger Jim May of The New Clarion.