Objectivist blogger Gus Van Horn has an OpEd in the April 30, 2010 edition of PajamasMedia, “Treat the Cause, Not the Symptom: Welfare State Is Draw for Illegals“.

Here is the opening:

With Governor Jan Brewer’s signing of SB 1070, the battle lines were drawn. The prospect of empowering and requiring law enforcement in Arizona to enforce federal immigration law raises civil rights concerns on both sides of the debate. Many supporters seem torn between these concerns and the prospect of overwhelming schools, social services, and the police if illegal immigration is left unchecked. However, as someone who sympathizes with its proponents, I must say that SB 1070 is wrong for Arizona for reasons far beyond civil rights issues.

SB 1070 deserves only one fundamental criticism: It would fail to protect the individual rights of American citizens — even if it hermetically sealed our borders and the police never touched a single American hair in the process of enforcing it. This is because the biggest headaches attributed to illegal immigration are not caused by it at all…

(Read the full text of “Treat the Cause, Not the Symptom: Welfare State Is Draw for Illegals“.)

Gus is absolutely right. Too many conservatives want to restrict immigration while failing to place the blame where it properly belongs — on welfare state policies that encourage an entitlement mentality amongst American citizens as well as immigrants (and often more among the former than the latter.)

Too many liberals want both open immigration and a welfare state — a recipe for disaster.

The only approach that respects individual rights is a policy of open immigration (which is not the same as unrestricted immigration) — and the abolition of the welfare state. For more on this, see Craig Biddle’s article in the Spring 2008 issue of The Objective Standard, “Immigration and Individual Rights“.

Congratulations, Gus, on getting published in PajamasMedia!

(Please feel free to add your own comments to the PJM site.)