The Lonely libertarian's Immigrant Solution

The following thought occurred to me the other day as I considered the historical similarities between the current immigration debate, and the debate of years past. Some of the story remains the same, whether it's Germans, the Irish, the Chinese, Jews, Italians, or Mexicans. In reality, despite what the law and order crowd may say, there is little that separates the illegal Mexican immigrants today from the immigrants of years past. As in the past, no real thoughts are being paid to laws or borders, only to mythical (and truthful) notion that America is the land of opportunity.

At the turn of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of immigrants poured into the country by way of Ellis Island. They hopped on boats back home in Europe with hopes and dreams of making better lives for their families and their children. They paid no attention to immigration laws and policy. And by and large, we let those immigrants in, and we are a better nation today for it.

What we need today is an Ellis Island on the Mexican Border. We have no such processing center today, and to all those concerned with both public health and national security issues, such a center would be a perfect solution to the real immigration problems of today. A modern day Ellis Island (maybe we could stick it in the middle of the desert and call it "Immigrant Oasis") would provide a mechanism for immigrants to cross the Mexican border legally, and would return some semblance of control over immigration to the government without building a wall, and without deploying troops.

The other part of the solution is the limitation of public assistance. We can't afford to bring the rest of the world to our standard of living, and offering the full array of social services to all immigrants would strain our budget beyond the breaking point. The question becomes, do we really care about helping people, or are we more concerned in keeping out standards of living that don't match our own high standards. Opportunities for work and higher wages help people- shutting our eyes and shutting our gates to the poverty of the rest of the world helps no one.