I fully realize that it is difficult to find humor in an immigration system that continues to bring death, suffering, humiliation, and a police state to countless people. Nonetheless, even amidst the darkness surrounding America’s system of government-controlled borders, I just can’t help but laugh at some of funny aspects of the extreme immigration anxiety that strikes immigration-control advocates.
Consider, for example, Florida Gov. Ron Santis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. They are totally bent out of shape over the immigration “crisis” along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Why is that funny?
Because these two guys, as well as many other immigration-control advocates who suffer from extreme immigration anxiety, have absolutely no idea that it is their system of immigration controls that produces the crisis that causes them to get so bent out of shape. Without their immigration-control system, there would be no immigration crisis. Moreover, they also don’t realize that when they call on President Biden to enforce their system even more than he already is, they are, at the same time, actually calling for a bigger immigration crisis, which will cause them to get even more bent out of shape than they already are.
How can anyone not find that funny?
It’s gets better. As true-blue Republicans, DeSantis and Abbott will tell you that they are big opponents of socialism and big supporters of free enterprise. This is especially true about DeSantis, who rails against socialism in Cuba.
Why is that funny?
Because neither of these two guys has any idea that the immigration-control system that he supports is a socialist system. It’s based on the socialist principle of central planning. The government plans in a top-down, command-and-control manner the movements of millions of people in a complex labor market. It sets the overall number of immigrants for each year, allocates a quota to each country, and sets the credentials for entry.
As the libertarian Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek put it, socialist central planners have a “fatal conceit” that they can actually accomplish this. Instead, all they do is create a crisis. The libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises called the results of central planning “planned chaos.” What better term to describe America’s decades-old, ongoing, never-ending immigration crisis?
A genuine free-enterprise system is one that is free of government control, which means people being free to engage in economic activity without governmental interference. That necessarily entails the free movements of people, goods, and services across political borders, just as we have between Virginia and Maryland, or Texas and Oklahoma, and all the other states.
DeSantis and Abbott clearly do not get that. They are convinced that America’s socialist system of immigration controls is actually part and parcel of America’s “free-enterprise system,” just as they also undoubtedly believe that Social Security, Medicare, education grants, farms subsidies, corporate bailouts, and public schooling are also part of America’s “free-enterprise system.” I find that really funny!
Another humorous part of all this is the conservative belief that if people are free to cross borders, that means the nation no longer has borders. That doesn’t even make sense, but I’l guarantee you that there are people who really believe that. For example, Republican Congressman Tom McClintock from California had an op-ed in the Washington Times two days ago entitled, “A Nation Without Borders Will Cease to Be a Nation.”
Now, let’s see. People from Maryland are free to cross the border into Virginia, and vice versa. As far as I know, the Potomac River continues to remain the border between these two states. Even though people have been free to cross this border, back and forth, for more than 200 years, neither state has ceased to exist. Given such, why would the freedom of people to cross the Rio Grande into Texas cause the river to dry up or cause the United States to fall into the ocean?
In fact, as Ken Burn’s new documentary, which is about how U.S. immigration controls contributed to the Holocaust, points out, our American ancestors had a system of open immigration for almost a century. Contrary to McClintock’s belief, the United States not only continued standing, it actually became the most prosperous nation in history.
Another funny aspect about all this immigration anxiety is the Republican belief that there is some sort of magical reform out there that will finally — finally! — bring an end to America’s decades-old, never-ending, ongoing, perpetual immigration crisis. It’s a belief, of course, that is shared by the mainstream media, which never ceases to berate public officials for failing to enact “comprehensive immigration reform.”
The reason that’s funny is that it is such a pipe dream. If such a magical reform was possible, it would have been discovered and implemented a long time ago. Over the decades, they have enacted all sorts of immigration reforms, and each one was considered to be the magical reform that would finally bring an end to America’s immigration crisis. One of the biggest reforms was making it a felony for American businesses to hire illegal immigrants. Yeah, let’s just throw those evil employers into jail for several years. That will surely cure the problem because now there won’t be any jobs for illegal immigrants. Except that it obviously didn’t end the crisis. And so the quest for a magical reform goes on, with the latest one calling for a better use of “E-Verify.” How can such nonsense not make someone laugh?
There is no reform, magical or not, that can make socialism work. It is an inherently defective paradigm. The sooner everyone comes to that realization, the better off everyone will be. DeSantis, Abbott, and all other immigration-control advocates are just beating their heads against the wall in the search for a magical immigration reform measure that will finally bring them inner peace. But all that it will bring them is a big headache, to go along with their extreme immigration anxiety.
Despite all the death, suffering, misery, and destruction of liberty that DeSantis, Abbott, and other immigration-control advocates have brought to so many people, it is still funny watching them get so bent out of shape over the results of their own statist system.