Dems Win Midterms — and There’s Already Talk About the Wonders of Open Borders

It’s not just that President Donald Trump delivered on his promise to seal the border. It’s also that net migration into the United States is perhaps the lowest it has been since the 1930s. In fact, when the numbers are finalized, it may turn out that 2025 saw negative net migration.

Of course, the Democrats intend to reverse this as soon as they can. Their stock is on the rise, too, with their resounding midterm victories. And in their wake (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not) there’s talk about how great open borders would be — if only we’d eliminate the welfare state first.

Yes, and “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” the old saying goes.

At issue is a Moneywise article that, though published just today, reaches way back to September commentary by economist Peter Schiff to make its case. Schiff, a libertarian economist, touted Gilded Age immigration standards in a tweet at the time, writing:

Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s when millions of immigrants flooded our shores, no paperwork was required to immigrate. No passports, visas, or work permits. Anyone who could afford a ticket could board a ship, arrive in America, answer a few basic questions, and be on their way.

Schiff asserted that returning to those days’ norms could usher in a new age of economic growth.

“[I]mmigration is not the problem,” he stated. “The problem is the welfare state. Shut off that magnet and America will no longer attract people looking for free stuff.”

This idea is, of course, not new, but was expressed decades ago by Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman.

“It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state,” he famously said.

Really, though, given today’s realities, it’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and not have a welfare state. Why?

Because most immigrants eventually get naturalized (and this would be especially easy under Schiff’s proposal). It’s well established, too, that most immigrants vote for big-government politicians — the very people who’ll deliver a welfare state.

Put simply, open borders ensure a vast pro-welfare-state voting bloc.

The Way We Were(n’t)

Schiff certainly has a very romantic view of the Gilded Age. As he also writes, that time’s immigrants

could stay as long as they wanted, work wherever they wanted, buy property, start businesses, and basically do anything any American citizen could do. In fact, in most states, they could legally vote in local, state, and even national elections, subject to the same poll tax, literacy test, or other qualifications required of American citizens. [Wow, the statists would love this standard today — minus the tax and test.]

If they wanted to naturalize, they just needed to register their intent and were given seven years to complete the paperwork necessary to become American citizens, which millions of immigrants were proud to do.

Things began to change in the 1930s …

Yet the above is not entirely accurate. Prior to then already we instituted the Immigration Act of 1924 (the National Origins Act). And as Moneywise itself points out:

But that era didn’t feature completely open borders. While immigration was less regulated than it is today, particularly for Europeans, restrictions were already emerging, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

There also were other differences. There was no jihadist threat, weapons of mass destruction, or drug-cartel maniacs to worry about. Most significantly, however, as commentary account Red Eagle Politics pointed out, the Gilded Age immigrants

came from a shared Western heritage, and were almost all Christian. The notion that the majority of third world immigrants are going to seamlessly integrate into such values and culture is like thinking you can install Mac software on a Windows PC.

This gets at the crux of the matter.

Man or Machine?

As is common today, Schiff views immigration through an economic prism. What skills do the newcomers have? How will they build the economy? But this is one-dimensional thinking. After all, there’s a name for entities defined merely by the job-related role they perform: robots.

Man, however, is not just an economic creature. He also has intellectual, emotional, psychological, moral, cultural, and spiritual dimensions. In fact, the most important things immigrants bring to our shores are their beliefs.

To further illustrate the economic-being approach’s folly, let’s apply the standard not to our national family, but our actual one. If you contemplated taking an outsider into your home, would you consider just economics? Would it only matter that he was going to contribute another $800 monthly to the family budget? Or would you first consider what beliefs and behaviors he’d bring into your home — how, for instance, he’d influence your kids?

It’s likewise with the national family. Absorb 10 million Muslim jihadists or 10 million Nazis over time, and it will have some political and social effect whether they’re low-skilled or high-skilled. For either way, their skill at “being American” will be fatally poor.

As to this, today’s immigrants’ statist voting habits, mentioned earlier, raise a question about their supposed economy-buttressing effects. How much will “high-skilled” immigrants improve our economy if, over time, their influence transforms it into a socialist one? They’ll be coding while wealth is eroding.

Besides, it’s now said that artificial intelligence and robotics will supplant virtually all American workers in the near future. In fact, if billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is right, this technology will make work optional and abundance the norm.

So we can stop treating immigrants like robots. Because for good or for ill, we’ll have real robot slaves soon enough.