print…all immigration policy by definition amounts to top-down, statist, central planning. But the least invasive policy is one that respects a nation’s historical and cultural complexion and the property rights of its taxpayers. Bush’s batch of soon-to-be amnestied illegal aliens are voracious tax consumers, who will cost more in social services than they pay in taxes over a lifetime. By contrast, immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1920, during the Great Migration, although poor, did not constitute a burden, because the Welfare State as we know it did not exist.
Moreover, what Bush in his dotage termed “the great American tradition of the melting pot” is no more. In previous decades, immigrants assimilated. In the spirit of the times, they are now encouraged to acculturate to the politics of petulance. As a result, too many seem to harbor a vestigial resentment toward the host society and to cling to an almost-militant distinctiveness.
Clearly, unfettered immigration and the interventionist state, as Ludwig von Mises noted, cannot coexist.
The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “Bush Answers Kennedy’s Calling.”