One of the most persistent divides between traditional conservatives and their libertarian/anarcho-capitalist counterparts involves a fundamental philosophical disagreement about immigration. While most conservatives view immigration primarily through the lens of preserving American culture by only accepting those immigrants who are assimilable and will tangibly benefit our society in the future, a view expressed repeatedly during debates over illegal immigration in this country, many libertarians view the subject in an altogether different light. For them, the question is not so much whether a particular cohort of immigrants will be an asset to the United States but whether we have any right to prevent them from settling in this country in the first place, which many answer in the negative.

Libertarians extol the primacy of individual rights, which in this case entails the right to emigrate from your country of birth whenever you so desire-something that I don’t think any conservative would take issue with-and to immigrate to whatever country you want to live and/or work in for an extended period of time, which is where the divide between the two camps emerges. Libertarians view the issue as one of freedom of association-and by extension, contract-wherein willing employers, such as large agribusinesses and meatpacking plants, seek out willing employees coming from nations with under-performing economies that can’t meet the personal and financial needs of their citizens. They believe that the nexus between trade and unfettered migration is inextricable, if not completely self-evident, and that the two can not be severed if a nation hopes to grow its economy. While this may well be true as a matter of law, there are numerous holes in this thesis intellectually, which opponents of open borders-even anarcho-capitalists such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe-have exposed through well-researched arguments of their own.

However, underlying the debate over whether immigration and settlement is a natural right is the assumption that all libertarians/anarcho-capitalists agree on the immigration issue, which is not as much of  a given as it would seem on the surface of things. One of the things that I’ve attempted to do with American Rattlesnake is debunk commonly held assumptions about immigration issues, and the assumption that libertarians all subscribe to Gary Johnson’s point of view is one that needs to be reexamined. There are many libertarians and  anarcho-capitalists who recognize both the practical difficulties and existential problems inherent in society based upon unfettered immigration, especially one with the vast social welfare apparatus of the United States. One of the chief exponents of the view that welfare programs need to be curtailed in order to solve the immigration problem is Gary Johnson’s opponent in the Republican presidential race, Congressman Ron Paul. Paul has repeatedly emphasized the need to do away with the generous, taxpayer subsidized social welfare programs that-while not serving as the initial magnet-provide incentives for illegal aliens to extend their stay in this country indefinitely. The population density of legal immigrants is also heavily correlated with the availability of welfare benefits. Even acclaimed economist Milton Friedman, who held a rather benign view of immigration in general, emphasized the incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered immigration.

The same opinion is held by many libertarians today, including self-professed constitutionalist Andrew Napolitano, who views Arizona’s landmark immigration law primarily through the prism of the Constitution’s supremacy clause and potential violations of the 4th Amendment via racial or ethnic profiling by law enforcement officers. I’m not sure that the Constitutional objection to statewide laws is dispositive, because-as Andrew McCarthy has pointed out repeatedly in National Review-there is no precedent for prohibiting states from enforcing laws that are consistent with federal statutes. Furthermore, if we look to the broader issue of legal immigration, there’s nothing to suggest that the men who drafted the United States Constitution supported the sort of unfettered immigration we have endured since passage of the Hart-Celler Act fundamentally altered this nation’s demographic destiny. This is a concept that is seldom grasped by arm-chair commentators on immigration these days, whose default option is to repeat the platitudinous-not to mention, factually incorrect-bromide that we are a “nation of immigrants.” What they neglect to mention is that most this nation’s founding fathers would have been implacably opposed to the present lassez-faire system of immigration, a fact that Thomas Woods-as anti-statist an individual as you’ll find among academics-expertly limns in this Human Events column published during the height of the amnesty debate in Washington D.C.

Yet, even if we were to concede that there’s no firm historical or Constitutional foundation for this nation’s current open borders policies, can it not be argued that there is a compelling moral case for the views espoused by those at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Cato Institute, Reasonoids, and other trendy, beltway cosmotarians? You would definitely think so if you took their arguments at face value. The notion that we have no moral basis for barring certain immigrants from entry into the United States is certainly widespread in certain libertarian circles, but I don’t believe that makes the idea, ipso facto, libertarian. Julian Simon, in a 1998 essay published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, articulated the perspective felt by many that individual autonomy takes precedence over other “public” goods, including our national borders. In an anarcho-capitalist reality, nation-states would not exist, therefore deciding who should or should not be admitted to your nation would be a moot point.

But while it might seem logical that freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of contract-and at its most essential level, the individual him or herself-are all prioritized over the wishes and feelings of citizens who have a vested interested in preserving the character of their nation, there are those that don’t think these competing values are necessarily mutually exclusive. In a persuasive essay written for Lew Rockwell several years ago, N. Stephan Kinsella made a very compelling argument that while the disposition of property in our society is unjust-insofar as the state has no right to expropriate land that rightfully belongs to individuals-so long as that property is entrusted to the state it has a responsibility to act as caretaker for the rightful owners. In this case, it has the responsibility to prevent the ingress of people that citizens do not want to welcome into their country. While those who are opposed to communitarianism in even its most minimal form might reject Kinsella’s public pool analogy, I think he makes a convincing case that some prophylactic measures need to be enforced to prevent the exploitation of your property-even if it’s already been subjected to theft by the state.

There are many cogent arguments against the current trendy libertarian support for open borders, several of them outlined by the first presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, John Hospers, in paper published by the Journal of Libertarian Studies over a decade ago entitled A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders. The concluding paragraph of the essay is especially perceptive in its analysis of the problem:

Occasionally, we hear the phrase “limousine liberals” used to describe the members of the liberal establishment who send their children to expensive private schools while consigning all the others to the public school system, which educates these children so little that by the time they finish the eighth grade they can barely read and write or do simple arithmetic, or make correct change in a drug store. It would be equally appropriate, however, to describe some other people as ”limousine libertarians” —those who pontificate about open borders while remaining detached from the scenes that their “idealism” generates. They would do well to reflect, in their ivory towers, on whether the freedom they profess for those who are immigrants, if it occurs at all, is to be brought about at the expense of the freedom of those who are not.

This passage describes, in a nut shell, the quintessence of cosmotarianism, and why most Americans-and even some in the libertarian movement-continue to reject it. I could post the most meticulously researched George Borjas journal article, the most statistically devastating backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, or the most irrefutable essay by Mahattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. And although all of these sources are invaluable in the fight to define the terms of this debate, they wouldn’t hold a candle to the self-evident fact that none of the greatest exponents and defenders of open borders, be it Tamar Jacoby, or Jason Riley, or Nick Gillespie, abide by their own exhortations. None of these individuals partake of the glorious mosaic which their unyielding ideology has done so much to create.

You won’t find many Reason Magazine editors or Cato Institute scholars living in Bergenfield, New Jersey, Maywood, California, or Eagle Pass, Texas. Why, you might ask? Because they would rather pass off the tremendous costs of their bankrupt philosophy onto ordinary Americans than to admit that they might just be wrong. These people are insulated from unfettered immigration’s worst effects, including chronic unemployment, violent crime, and environmentally devasting pollution from Arizona to California and throughout the country. They have the luxury of ignoring the impact of this country’s changing demographic profile while promoting the patently absurd notion that our open borders are a boon to all but the small percentage of high school dropouts.

What’s more, they make the equally ludicrous assertion-outlined in the Caplan speech above-that importing millions of unskilled, uneducated immigrants, who will be dependent upon costly government services, from quasi-socialist nations will expand this nation’s economic liberty. Forget the fact that we now enjoy less economic freedom than our northern neighbors, a development concurrent with the greatest expansion of immigration in this country’s history, the entire premise underlying this concept is flawed. You do not build a prosperous, 21st century, post-industrial society around foreigners from countries with low human capital. And the amount of time, energy and economic resources that need to be shifted in order to improve the educational prospects and earning potential of these immigrants, e.g. the billions funneled into ESL programs each year, is so cost prohibitive that it outweighs whatever benefits can be gleaned from such an arrangement.

Another seeming inconsistency in the archetypal libertarian solution to our immigration problem is the reluctance of most libertarians to support any sort of relief for American taxpayers who are tasked with paying for millions of illegal aliens and immigrants who are dependent upon costly social services. Particularly, public schooling and emergency health care. Invoking Friedman’s argument once again, we find that while many libertarians will concede that dependency upon welfare programs is a bad thing they will do nothing to limit access to these programs by illegal aliens or permanent residents. To the contrary, if any such bill-which is immigration neutral-is proffered, they will stalwartly oppose it. Just ask new Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who supports the DREAM Act, despite the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing the in-state tuition discounts of its recipients. Paleolibertarian writer Ilana Mercer deftly skewers  purported libertarians who routinely call for the abolition of the welfare state while adding a proviso that excludes immigrants and illegal aliens from the fiscal demands of their libertopia.

True believers in liberty, like Mercer and the late Murray N. Rothbard, recognize the inherent contradiction in persuading your fellow Americans to reject the embrace of the state while simultaneously welcoming millions of non-Americans into the country who prefer a larger and more intrusive government in almost every respect into our society. They realize that the banal platitudes used to support unfettered immigration are grossly inaccurate, if not transparent lies. They also realize that the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, and the hospitality industry do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the free market, and that to a large extent our current immigration policy is another form of corporate welfare, which putative libertarians would be quick to denounce in any other context. The time-saving, productivity-increasing technological innovations that would normally be welcomed by these same individuals are rejected by those who apparently think pre-industrial stoop labor is the best method of improving  our agricultural production. Finally, they recognize that the  utopian, globalist conception of freedom-where people living in Gabon or the Hadhramaut have just as much say in how we are governed as American citizens living in New York-contravenes the distinctively American, Constitutional, federalist, representative republic designed by this nation’s founding fathers.

In short, the issue before the house is not whether it is an abandonment of principle for libertarians to embrace sensible immigration restrictions, it’s why institutional libertarians representing organizations like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation have stifled an honest, open intellectual debate about this subject. Even as the negative repercussions of our government’s devotion to open borders become harder to ignore for all but the most oblivious, the gatekeepers of respectable opinion on this subject continue to narrow the parameters of discussion to their own narrow, ahistorical perspective. I don’t expect that to change any time in the near future, but those of us who want an intellectually honest debate about the most important issue of our time can at least begin to clarify its terms, if for no other reason than to educate those novices interested in how mass immigration has impacted our society who are asking themselves how they should view these changes from a liberty-oriented perspective.

Documenting the lives of immigrants is an enduring aspect of American literature, which befits a nation that has been shaped to such a large extent by successive waves of migration from distant lands. One of the most important novels published in the first half of the 20th century, Christ in Concrete, was written by the son of Italian immigrants who sought to portray the plight of his community by fictionalizing the story of his and his parents’ lives.

The book’s protagonist, Paul, is loosely modeled on Pietro Donato, whose father was crushed to death as he was working on a construction site. In the novel, Paul is compelled to curtail his education and become an apprentice brick layer at the callow age of 12 in order to support his large, Italian-American family. The figure of Paul’s deceased father Geremio casts a pall over the entire work, especially after the death of his caretaker/godfather, a man by the name of Nazone, who serves as both a mentor and protege of Paul as the novel progresses. 

While Christ in Concrete revolves around the daily struggles of these Italian immigrants, as well as a Russian-Jewish family that Paul develops a friendship with over time, and the ethnic community in which they reside, the focus of the author seems to encompass a much broader, almost universal critique of what he viewed as the inherent deficiencies of both American capitalism and the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, this novel is replete with religious imagery and symbolism. From the protagonist-who’s the namesake of Paul the Apostle-to the repeated invocations of God during times of misfortune, e.g. Anunziata’s pleas for mercy after the death of her husband, Geremio, Christ in Concrete is a biblical allegory, albeit not in the traditional sense.  

One of the techniques Donato deftly employs throughout the narrative is personification. The most glaring example of this strategy can be found in Job, the impersonal, dehumanizing force that can offer either salvation or damnation to the construction workers who labor under its inscrutable rules and deceitful interlocutors. The fact that the construction sites Paul looks to for sustenance after his father’s cruel death constitute an actual character-and are referred to as such-demonstrates the centrality of work to this tale. It is the glue that bonds these men together even more than a common heritage, language or culture. It is also a consistently dark and foreboding force that menaces Paul and his co-workers, as well as a vengeful god that takes away his father, amputates his uncle Luigi’s leg, and ultimately sends his godfather Nazone plunging to his doom.

Through Paul’s eventual embrace of atheism-a process expedited by his talks with his Russian neighbor-as well as the sinister actions of the men who control the building trades upon which his livelihood depends, Pietro Donato establishes a didactic prose that permeates the novel. Despite its polemical style, there is a natural dramatic tension that I think most readers will enjoy, although I think the comparisons to The Grapes of the Wrath-another novel of social conscience released in the same year-are overwrought. The highly stylized speech of both the main and peripheral characters-most of whom are illiterate, first generation Italian immigrants-is off-putting at first, but like other patois used in conceptual fiction, e.g. A Clockwork Orange, Pygmy, you eventually adjust to its rhythms and cadences.

The book gives you an inkling of how precarious certain industries that rely upon immigrant labor are, especially during severe economic hardships-the novel takes place during the Great Depression-that displace millions of workers. But I think it also gives you an idea of how difficult it is to assimilate great masses of people who come from a different culture, were nurtured to speak another tongue, and who have to adjust to a completely different way of life. As I noted in my summary of the Intelligence Squared debate I attended, one of the main issues was the difficulty of assimilation, a point of contention between the two opposing sides. The fact is that previous waves of immigrants were given the space, both temporal and in terms of distance, to adapt to their changed circumstances and raise their children as full-blooded American citizens. 

The danger lies in our current policy of unfettered, mass immigration in perpetuity, which prevents the assimilation and adaptation necessary for this country-and its newcomers-to thrive. One of the great lessons from Christ in Concrete is that immigrants-even first generation immigrants-can assimilate the values of their adopted country, which in Paul’s case means independence from the seemingly intractable beliefs of his mother. However, that process does not occur in a vacuum, and contrary to the dogma of people like Tamar Jacoby and her fellow open-borders apologists, it needs to be expedited by a society intent on retaining its core cultural and national identity. E pluribus Unum is not simply a quaint motto; it is the means by which people who come to America become Americans, and it is something that we can’t afford to lose as a nation.

This past tuesday I had the distinct pleasure of attending an Intelligence Squared debate whose subject is one that this website has addressed repeatedly in the past, although admittedly, not as often as I would have liked. The drive to thwart repeated amnesty proposals introduced throughout this past year has not given us the opportunity to address the innumerable problems presented by unfettered, mass (legal) immigration.

That’s why I relish the chance to explore the flaws of our current, post-1965 wave of immigration. Or, as the framers of the IQ2 debate phrased their resolution: Don’t Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses.

The title, although slightly cheeky, was appropriate, given the subject under discussion. I have to commend Congressman Tom Tancredo for using his opening statement to debunk many of the myths surrounding The New Colossus, the Emma Lazarus sonnet inscribed upon a plaque inside of the Statue Of Liberty. Contrary to popular opinion-at least, the opinion propounded by supporters of mass immigration-that poem has absolutely nothing to do with immigration, and was in fact penned in connection with the transatlantic fundraising campaign to erect the iconic statue in New York Harbor. The statue itself was designed with the intention of honoring American liberty by French liberals and republicans, not as a tribute to mass immigration; certainly not as a calling card for mass, unskilled, uneducated immigrants from the Old World.

After knocking down one of the chief rhetorical pillars of the pro-immigration mythos constructed by their opponents, Tamar Jacoby and Julian Castro, the current mayor of San Antonio, Tancredo and Secretary of State Kris Kobach proceeded to make the empirical case against our current, misguided federal immigration policies. While Jacoby attempted to justify low skilled immigration on the basis of economic expediency, i.e. it helps the large corporations, and their lobbyists, that are her organization’s chief benefactors, Mayor Castro attempted to limn the legal and political arguments in favor of unfettered immigration as he saw them.

The case by Jacoby is a familiar one, equally unconvincing today as it was when corporate lobbying outfits like the Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, and American Farm Bureau demanded the imposition of amnesty and guest worker programs opposed by the vast majority of Americans in years past. Secretary Kobach  made a convincing rebuttal to these tedious talking points that focused on the seven million jobs that illegal aliens occupy which could be filled by the over 14 million Americans who currently find themselves unemployed.  He also pounded home the ineluctable fact that low-skilled immigrants from poverty-stricken regions depress the wage scale of every industry in which they’re employed. The perfect illustration of this phenomenon is the meatpacking industry, which has been transformed from a relatively desirable, decently compensated, working class vocation into a way station for underpaid immigrant workers.

It was at this point that the philosophical gulf between the two sides came into stark relief, as Tamar Jacoby repeated the stale platitudes of the Chamber of Commerce and its allies, including the charges that immigrants do the jobs “Americans won’t do,” and that even those who were willing to allegedly demean themselves by embracing “menial” work would eventually quit those jobs once better opportunities for career advancement arose. In response to the affirmative’s citation of the Swift meat processing plant, which continued to thrive in spite of the immigration raids that stripped it of many “hard-working” illegal aliens, Jacoby asserted-with no supporting evidence-that the plant experienced a high turnover rate once it began to rely upon the labor of actual Americans.

Perhaps even more persuasive than the economic argument against our government’s current immigration policy, were the fiscal arguments which Mr. Kobach marshalled with aplomb. He rightly brought up the extremely high percentage of immigrant-headed households  that rely upon one or several different welfare programs, a percentage that outstrips even the large percentage of American citizens who now use those very same programs, according to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was the pivotal moment of the debate from my perspective, with Kobach repeating the famous Milton Friedman quote declaring the mutual incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered, unskilled immigration.

Even though the negative side attempted to refute the concrete data provided by Kris Kobach, prompting an hilarious exchange where Ms. Jacoby was asked if she thought that National Academy of Sciences was biased against immigrants, the negative fiscal impact of our current immigration pool is, as he said during the debate, indisputable. While conceding that using generous extrapolations of what immigrant families might contribute to the economy in the future-scenarios that are, as Tom Tancredo pointed out, so speculative as to be almost meaningless from an empirical perspective-might show some benefits from unskilled immigration, Mr. Kobach nevertheless provided a litany of devastating facts and figures-including referencing the astounding Robert Rector Heritage Foundation study on the potential costs of Comprehensive Immigration Reform-that, in my opinion, demolished the claims made by the opponents of the debate resolution.

Although Ms. Jacoby’s arguments were, as usual, entirely unconvincing, the other “con” debater, Mayor Julian Castro, made at least an appealing rhetorical case in favor of the post-1965 immigration status quo. While agreeing with Kobach and Tancredo that the vast majority of immigrants today are lower working class, Castro claimed that the dynamism of our economy-as well as the considerable skills these immigrants bring to this country-provided for extreme upward mobility among these same immigrant communities. Unfortunately, he did not address the main concern that the affirmative side expressed throughout the debate. Namely, that the uninterrupted flow of immigrants from the same unskilled, undereducated populace would inalterably change the culture and economy of this country.

It was on this point that I think Tom Tancredo truly hit his stride. While Mayor Castro invoked laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act as an illustration of the government straying from this country’s core tenets, the former Colorado congressman reminded him-as well the audience- that the current wave of  mass immigration from the third world is a relatively recent phenomenon that can be traced back to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the brain-child of the late Ted Kennedy, a doctrinaire liberal who used his time in the United States Senate to remake this country into a multicultural mosaic, not the melting pot it had traditionally been. He explained how each previous wave of immigrants-whether it was the Irish who came here in the wake of the great potato famine, or the Eastern Europeans who came at the end of the 19th century-was allowed time to assimilate into American society before being deluged with yet more immigrants from the same region and nation.

In the end, I think it was this argument that persuaded the vast majority of “undecided” voters to come over to the affirmative side. While superficially appealing, the arguments advanced by Jacoby and Castro were essentially contentless. They relied upon pulling the emotional strings of the audience, attempting to draw upon the nostalgia most people have for their ancestors-a common theme used by immigration enthusiasts and amnesty supporters is to draw an analogy between this aberrent wave of unrestricted immigration and previous periods of mass immigration. However, they ultimately did not succeed because the opponents of the evening’s resolution could not provide a compelling argument for keeping our doors open to millions of immigrants who do not possess 21st century skill sets, who are not able to support themselves independent of the American taxpayer, and who are entering a nation with a vast welfare state that did not exist in previous generations.

It was a masterful performance by both Kris Kobach and Tom Tancredo and a riveting discussion throughout. I highly recommend you watch the entire debate for yourselves though, and draw your own conclusions.

If there’s one subject the mainstream media loves to skirt it’s the problems caused by Islamic expansionism in the developing world. If there’s another subject the MSM loves to avoid, it’s the problems caused by massive migrations of people into previously ethnically/religiously homogeneous nations.

The volatile political situation currently unfolding in the Ivory Coast highlights the overlap between both problems in an acute way. While many media outlets are depicting the battle between supporters of  President Laurent Gbagbo and Alessane Outtara as simply a fight between the southern and northern parts of Cote d’Ivoire, the truth is much more complex. As this analysis points out, one of the chief reasons that Mr. Outtara emerged victorious from this most recent, disputed election is because he was supported by almost all the immigrants who settled in the Ivory Coast from its Muslim neighbors, e.g. Burkina Faso, Mali, etc… 

In other words, the people who were brought to the country-one of the most prosperous in West Africa, and an oasis of stability at one point in time-as laborers eventually became permanent residents who disrupted the existing political dynamics of the Ivory Coast. This is the difficulty you face with unchecked immigration, especially of people that share a completely different set of values than the native population. It’s why the constant clamor for guest-worker programs from the likes of Tamar Jacoby and Jason Riley should fall on deaf ears in this country. 

While the concept of “workers” sounds appealing at first blush, the fact that those “guest” workers bring values and prejudices-like those workers who have now completely transformed the Ivory Coast-is something left unexamined by immigration’s biggest boosters. Before we allow millions of people to come here to “work” we should ask ourselves what else they will do once they’ve established roots in this country.

As many of you might remember, one of the issues that occupied a brief portion of the media cycle during 2008′s presidential election was the status of one of Barack Obama’s Kenyan relatives who happened to live in the United States. For better or worse, Aunt Zeituni has returned to the public spotlight. As much as I would like to impute underhanded motives to the  people who granted this woman permanent residency-at the very least, it merits further investigation-the truth is that the immigration law in this country is such a complete muddle that it’s not inconceivable that this would have been the outcome of a similar case not involving a distant relation of the POTUS.

But rather than explore the inherent absurdities of a system that would allow an infirm, unemployed woman who made illegal contributions to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, who received disability payments for which she was ineligible, and whose shelter is being furnished at the expense of American taxpayers, to remain in this country indefinitely, I want to look at the assertion by Aunt Zeituni that she has been exploited by this system.

At first glance, considering all of the benefits the United States-a nation that all would agree is preferable to the horrible, third world country  she fled-has extended to Zeituni Onyango, her assertion that she has been exploited would appear to be the height of ingratitude and arrogance. Well, as surprising as this opinion might seem, I think she might have a valid point.

After all, what did Aunt Zeituni do, except take advantage of every opportunity that was presented to her? She was allowed to live-and was paid a small stipend-by the federal government which also ordered her deportation, a seeming contradiction that must have given her even more reason to believe that what she was doing, i.e. breaking the law, was correct. But even if she realized the import of her actions, what was to stop her from taking advantage of a slew of benefits the American taxpayer extended to her? Wouldn’t she have been foolish not to enjoy the bounty she was given, rightfully or not, once she fled her native homeland?

Don’t we all have a side, even if we’re loathe to admit so, that wants something for nothing? A part of us that loves receiving a reward, even if it’s unearned? There are millions of rent-controlled and rent stabilized apartment buildings in New York, and goodness knows, you don’t need to be an ardent anti-capitalist to enjoy the inherent benefits of living in one of those units. Just as you needn’t have been a white supremacist to have enjoyed the racial classfication under Apartheid that came with being a white South African in the pre-Mandela era.

Granted, the characterization of illegals as benign, put-upon laborers trying to provide for their families, an obnoxious cliche perpetuated by open borders apologists like Tamar Jacoby and the disciples of Robert Bartley at the Wall Street Journal editorial page, is far from the truth. Many of these individuals are an exigent threat to the health and well being of Americans. However, the vast majority of them are simply different versions of Aunt Zeituni, i.e. people who come here to exploit the opportunities and collect the benefits that come from living in the United States.

See, the problem isn’t Zeituni Onyango. The problem, to paraphrase the great cartoonist Walter Kelly, is us! We are the ones that gave people like President Obama’s Kenyan aunt the impression that our immigration system was established to help individuals like her, and not for the benefit of Americans. Perhaps the accusation that we have exploited her is a bit much, but I honestly think she hits the mark closer than many so-called experts on the immigration issue.

Until countries like America and Canada pull up the welcome mat, illegal aliens will continue to believe that they are welcome.