Yearning to Breathe Free, or Yearning to Suck at the Welfare Teat?

The welfare state is incompatible with "open borders", no matter how the Democrats would love to hook immigrants on entitlements:

Why is it so hard for politicians to understand that the differences between legal and illegal immigration have to be real and carry real consequences for those who break our law? Will they listen more to the half-million or so illegals and their sympathizers who demonstrated in Los Angeles Saturday against tougher laws? Will they listen to the president who has been fishing for votes in the Rio Grande ever since he began his first presidential campaign? More likely, the Democrats will fight -- as Harry Reid promised they would -- against any measure that will punish illegals or make it tougher for them to stay once they're in the country. The Democrats' position is easier to understand than the president's.

In the two decades before 9-11, the American welfare state was shrinking dramatically. The confluence of reduced job discrimination in the work place, the booming economy and the shift to service industries reduced the dependency of minorities on government welfare and with it the Democratic voter base. Voters with jobs, paying taxes and supporting families, aren't interested in increasing taxes to pay others not to work. The Democrats' answer, of course, wasn't to help Americans take greater advantage of our economic boom. The Dems want to make it easier for people who aren't citizens to become them, to be eligible for government aid and for felons who were deprived of the franchise to get it back. By repopulating the welfare state with illegal immigrants and re-enfranchised felons the Dems seek to restore their Great Society glory days and shackle us to the oars of the welfare state galleys. It's much harder to understand Republicans' fecklessness about the issue.

The costs of illegal immigration are staggering. Dozens of hospitals in California and Texas may close because the unpaid burden of providing care for illegals is enormous. School budgets are routinely destroyed by the cost of educating illegals. And the crime committed by illegals -- though the cost of keeping someone behind bars remains less than the statutory Congressional salary -- is forcing states to spend tens of millions to keep those who commit crimes off our streets. And it's not only California and Texas that suffer these costs. States from Iowa to South Carolina are feeling the same pinch.

Businesses who benefit from illegal immigrant employees argue that the benefit to our economy far outweighs the cost. But there is no data to support that claim, and any number of studies to show the cost to taxpayers is in the tens of billions every year.

We ought to welcome immigrants who come here to become Americans, work hard, and respect our laws. We have a sovereign right to send back to their homelands those who simply wish to live off the largesse of the American taxpayer.