I’ve always been fairly open to immigration. I have a lot of immigrant friends and acquaintances. They are hardworking, mostly honest and good additions to America. Not all immigrants are the same and we should be cautious about who we let in to the country. Muslims, as much as possible, should be barred from entry. That seems obvious. Koreans, Chinese and Japanese are very successful immigrants with very strong support networks so we can be liberal with them. A country our size can easily absorb and assimilate half a million new citizens each year, maybe a little more in good times.

Now, if we shut off all immigration, as we have in the past, that’s fine too. We have roughly 40 million foreign born in the US. That’s a big number and the people would be justified in wanting a halt, in order to let the current immigrants get settled. It is only fair. Inviting these people in and then screwing them by gutting the labor market with more immigrants is pretty close to evil. If we are going to have immigration, we should make sure the immigrants succeed, as much as possible.

The problem is that immigration stopped being a public policy issue and became a rentier racket for the ruling class. Big companies like cheap labor from indentured servants. Small business likes cash labor so they can avoid paying taxes and insurance. Then we have an army of human traffickers that make money getting migrants into America. These brokers operate on both sides of the border. Of course, foreign governments have figured out to make money off this racket as well.

This story on VDare explain how the way the Mexican government, for example, profits from illegal immigration. Billions flow from America to Mexico through illegal immigration. Of course, the drug trade is intimately tangled up in the immigration rackets and with the Mexican government. All of this is facilitated by a banking system that operates beyond the reach of any government’s laws. If you go to a convenience store near where migrants live, you’ll find a wire transfer machine/check cashing machine located in the back. Western Union seems to own most of them.

The human brokers are probably the most offensive to the morality of a sane people. This story I stumbled upon from a long ago is a great example. The areas where these poultry plants operate are not suffering from labor shortages. In fact, light manufacturing locates to these areas because of the abundance of cheap land and cheap local labor. It is a hassle dealing with rural rednecks and rural blacks. They demand things like sick time and holiday pay. Slaves from Korea tend not to cause much trouble. They are much less likely to fall into a machine or blow the place up by accident.

The economics of immigration policy are easy to understand once you look into it. As the above shows, there are a lot of people making big money by flouting the laws. Getting easier laws to flout, presumably, opens up greater avenues for these parasites to profit. That’s the thing to remember. The cheap labor may mean cheap landscaping, but the American put out of work by the illegal migrant is on welfare, which drives up your taxes and social costs. In effect, these immigration privateers are taxing all of us by shifting costs to the tax payer.

On every other issue, we find politicians on both sides. Raising or lowering business taxes, for example, will get friends of business out in support of the proposals, but it also gets pols out who are emotionally opposed to profit making business. In other words, you can’t bribe Nancy Pelosi into supporting tax cuts. Immigration is the exception. Only a handful of pols dare speak out against the moneyed interests. Even pols who have nothing to gain and represent strong anti-immigrant constituencies are silent. It’s as if a madness has taken hold of the ruling elite, where any criticism of immigration is heresy.

The increasingly clownish Marco Rubio is back with a new scheme to flood the STEM fields with indentured servants. Keep in mind that his political prospects took a nosedive after he backed the last immigration scheme. Unless he is retarded, the guy has to know that the public is overwhelmingly against this. Yet, here he is throwing his career away for this cause. Even assuming he is getting bribed, why take the risk? Rubio is a young man who could be president one day. Why risk it all just for a few bucks and the pat on the head from the ruling elites?

That’s the key question. Simple bribery is never enough on other issues so why would immigration be the exception?

The answer is the secular religion we call liberalism, progressivism, multiculturalism, etc. A core tenet of this belief set is that all humans are the same. Economics and circumstance are what makes for different results. Ireland is the way it is not because it is full of Irish, but because of the accident of history. Put a bunch of Bantus on the island and before long you get black Irish who are remarkably good at track and field. It’s not just that race is a myth; ethnicity is a myth, a leftover from a bygone era.

When applied to immigration, the only morally consistent policy is open borders. After all, letting in one group over another means one group is better, innately better, than the other group. That blows apart the whole thing. It’s why Steve Sailer has it all wrong about how France can walk back from their immigration policies. Even saying that “we have reached our goal” on immigration admits that not all people are the same and therefore it is good and proper to make judgments about them based on culture. Admitting that culture is real and permanent is inconceivable.