Oh, like the first 450 years of our history (150 as a country) when there were no passports (except for diplomats) visas or fences and anybody could come into the country and eventually become a citizen like 90% or more of the people on this board's ancestors?
Turns out there was no such things as "illegal" immigration unless you were Chinese or from an "undesirable" race or country.
Originally Posted by austxjr
You completely miss the point every time, don't you, ASStxjr?
Tell me, in those first 450 years (150 as a country), when there were no passports or visas, was there a welfare state?
No, there wasn't. If you came here in 1927, you had to make it on your own or else. Few people realize that prior to about 1965 when Ted Kennedy changed the immigration laws of this country to favor the Third World, about ONE THIRD of all the people who immigrated here eventually emigrated back to their native countries because they couldn't cut it here on their own.
Do you really think that 1/3 go back home now? Not when they can receive government benefits, they don't. Just like those worthless Boston Marathon bombers. No one in their family could cut it here. Yet we gave them over 100K in public assistance and they still blew us up.
The immigration debate suffers from survivorship bias. We hear the great immigrant success stories from the descendants of the 2/3rds that succeeded. We don't hear from the descendants of the 1/3rd that failed, because THEY AREN'T HERE to tell us.
Everyone acts like the immigration process weeds out the losers in 2013 the same way it did in 1913. It doesn't and it hasn't in decades.
That part of the feel-good "melting pot" story never seems to get told, does it?
You cannot have both open borders and a welfare state. One of them has to go. Pick one.