https://pilotonline.com/opinion/editorial/article_716c25ee-c04e-11e9-8dc7-6353be5964f8.html
The editors misread Emma Lazarus’s poem, The New Colossus.
Pilot Editorial: Cuccinelli now the face of Trump’s immigration policies
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Nowhere does the poem specifically mention the United States or even America. It pays no homage to immigration. Instead, it’s focus is the Mother of Exiles, a euphemism for liberty.
Ms. Lazrus must have felt, as the designer of the statue surely did, that liberty’s “conquering limbs” would eventually and inevitably unite the entire world. In this context it is ironic that the editors portray the poem as an excuse for an arbitrary expansion of the welfare state. Dependency, after all, is a form of imprisonment. The “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are by definition the self-sufficient, just as Ken Cuccinelli has suggested.
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We have decided over the years that if you reside legally within our borders and your family income is at or below a certain level then food, shelter and medical subsidies will be available.
If you had been above that and were able to pay federal taxes at one time, then that is part of the benefits you paid into. If you never reached that income status, then you would be expected to pay taxes when you were able.
Most who come here legally and actually attain a green card, fully expect to be able to become Americans at some point. And therein lies the problem for the anti-immigration policies of the current administration.Essentially the Millers, et. al., just don’t want anymore immigrants, period.
Whether that is a policy that makes demographic sense it might or might not hold water.
We might wish that everyone who migrated here were millionaire entrepreneurs, but that is not the case. Instead we have a cross section of people just like we have as natural born citizens.Many do quite well, some not so well and some fail. But I would be surprised if those who do come here expect to fail.
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RE: “We have decided over the years that if you reside legally within our borders and your family income is at or below a certain level then food, shelter and medical subsidies will be available.”
I don’t support that decision, and I certainly would not extend it to non-citizens.
Government is the worst possible institution to use as a clearing house for charity because, by its nature, government cannot address personal circumstances. Government can only dehumanize the individual in the process of extending aid. But dehumanization is the opposite of charity.
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Another view is not that subsidies are a citizen/non-citizen issue, but rather a taxpayer issue. That was my point.
Not unlike police protection, clean running water, fire protection, access to roads. We don’t deny these to the poor or non-citizens if their tax payments are lower than the cost of services. Or non existent.
We prefer not to have people starve or die in hospital parking lots. Just like we subsidize farms when times are bad.
Our safety nets are pretty skimpy compared to most other wealthy nations. Few recipients are going to survive well enough without some additional income. Which is the source of the term “the working poor”.
What is truly dehumanizing are the endless examples of whole families living in a car because the breadwinners can’t afford housing. Yet the parent or parents work, the kids go to school (and depend on the school lunches), bathing in public restrooms, lining up at food banks, etc.
IMHO.
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Economist Milton Friedman warned that we could have open borders or a welfare state, but not both. With at least a billion people in the world still living in grinding poverty, and no way for us to accommodate all of them, he was clearly correct.
Perhaps, as it has proven impractical to build a wall around the country, the better choice is to build a wall around the welfare state.
That does not mean that only those already financially stable can be allowed in,as those still needing help can seek it from family already here or from charity in general, but the capacity of the community to provide that charity can serve as an upper limit to the number of poor we can welcome at one time.
Past generations of immigrants did exactly that and this one can do tjhe same.
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Understand.
Who wants open borders?
There are a lot of improvements that could be made, no doubt. And most debates conflate illegal with legal.
Millions of the undocumented have been here for years, contributing to the economy with hard labor, low pay and little security.
And businesses have profited hugely by using them. And so have we for that matter.
So what to do? Treat them like Iraqi translators that risked lives for our soldiers? Or the Hmong tribesmen who did the same for us in Vietnam.
I hope not, because we turned our heels and said thanks, and left them behind to die.
Can we spell “exploit” as part of our DNA?
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“Who wants open borders?”
I do.
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