Ron Paul on immigration


Presidential candidate Ron Paul has been getting a lot of publicity for being the only Republican candidate who opposed the war on Iraq.



Ron Paul was once a Libertarian presidential candidate, is known for opposing most government programs.



However, Ron Paul wants more restriction on immigration, which will make government bigger & intrusive.



Stuart Hayashi sent me a great email on this topic



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I remember the good old days, when U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said that he wanted to eliminate federal expenditures on wasteful government boondoggles like Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere.



"Yet Dr. Paul voted in favor of the ridiculous "border fence."



As Penn & Teller demonstrated, the border fence won't even be able to keep Mexicans out of the United States; they can easily scale over it, burrow under it, or even burst through it. (Uh, not that I mind the fence's inability to keep Mexicans out.)



Since the border fence won't even be able to fulfill its explicit purpose, it will serve as a deterrent against Mexicans illegally entering the country in no manner other than sending the implicit message "You're Not Wanted Here."



So, basically, Dr। Paul and the other Congressmen who voted for this bill have committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to . . . make a rude gesture.



This is a much more wasteful boondoggle -- a far more deplorable white elephant -- than some Bridge to Nowhere. It's a fence in the middle of nowhere that doesn't keep peope out.



Of course, it could be much worse -- I would be much more incensed if all this money were spent and it actually *succeeded* in keeping the Mexicans out.



As HPU Reason Club veteran Pablo Wegsend (2000-2005) [that's me ] put it, "In other words, Ron Paul wants to propose big government! After all, government would need to expand to find out who's illegal? That means more regulations on business, more regulations on human movement, mandatory ID cards, etc."



That's true. The exact same Ron Paul who accuses other Republicans of supporting fascist measures that trample on civil liberties for some imaginary increase in national security, is actually implementing the exact same program against undocumented Mexicans.



Ostensibly for the sake of preserving American security, Dr. Paul is abrogating the lives, liberty, and private property of Mexican aliens, not on account of their initiating force against anybody's life or private property, but simply because they are in this country without his permission.



But aren't the Mexicans trespassing on Americans' land? Not when they're working on some private site for really low "sweatshop" wages.



America -- "our" country -- is not public property. It is an assemblage of privately-owned plots of land that are adjacent to one another.



I think of America as being like a jigsaw puzzle. A puzzle piece is a private plot of land. The edges of the piece represent the boundaries separating one private plot from another.



You can peaceably do what you want with your own private plot of land, and I peaceably do what I want on my private plot.



You do what you want on your puzzle piece, and I do what I want on my puzzle piece.



So if Dr. Paul doesn't want Mexicans on his land, he doesn't have to invite them onto it.



But he doesn't have the right to exercise government force -- backed by guns -- to prevent Prof. Schoolland from peaceably inviting consenting adult Mexicans onto the Schoolland Estate.



And since this is all peaceful, why should Prof. Schoolland and the Mexicans first have to get a Permission Slip from Dr. Paul and the State before they go through with this?



If Dr. Paul believes that he is right to have the State punish Prof. Schoolland for peaceably inviting Mexicans onto his own land, without first getting the government's permission, then, essentially, he's arrogating to himself the moral right to dictate over other people's private property.



If the government can dictate over whom you can or can't peaceably invite onto your own real estate, then the government is implying that your land doesn't ultimately belong to you; it belongs to the government.



That is the nationalization of real estate. It's Land Socialism.



The exact same Ron Paul who balks at the nationalization of health care and the steel industry would, in practice, himself nationalize land in this country.



And the argument that "Mexicans shouldn't be allowed into America freely until welfare is abolished for them" is utterly fatuous.



Is it true that no new X's should be freely allowed into America until all public expenditures on X's are abolished?



Farms and corporations get welfare, too.

If it's true that no new Mexicans should be allowed in America without facing a ridiculously cumbersome approval process, until welfare for Mexicans is banned, then wouldn't it also be true that no new farms should be allowed to exist in America without facing a ridiculously cumebersome approval process, until welfare for farms is banned?



Yet Dr. Paul says that the government already makes it too hard to start a new farm or new business in this country.



That's a double-standard on his part, especially since the conservative Heritage Foundation (another opponent of open immigration) actually admits that more money is spent on welfare to corporations and farms than is spent on the poor (including poor illegal aliens).



So when Dr. Paul votes for increases in federal spending to prevent greedy corporations from "exploiting" undocumented immigrant laborers, and to stop those Mexicans from "stealing" our jobs, he is voting for Big Government and Statism.