Posted on February 24, 2020

Open Borders Bernie Sanders Wants Full Government Benefits for Illegal Aliens

Andrea Widburg, American Thinker, February 23, 2020

In his Nevada victory speech, Bernie promised that all Americans will pay for Democrat mistakes, subsidizing not only citizens but also illegal aliens.

Milton Friedman, who was so focused on economics that he forgot that nations need a shared culture to function, believed open borders represented the free flow of both financial and human capital. Friedman, however, drew a single bright line when it came to open borders –no welfare:

Immigration is a particularly difficult subject. There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state it is a different story: the supply of immigrants will become infinite. Your proposal that someone only be able to come for employment is a good one but it would not solve the problem completely. The real hitch is in denying social benefits to the immigrants who are here. That is very hard to do, much harder than you would think as we have found out in California.

Bernie Sanders has no time for that economic reality:

Today we got 500,000 people sleeping out on the streets of America. Today we have 18 million families paying 50% of their limited incomes for housing. Today we have hundreds of thousands of bright young people who cannot afford to get a higher education. Today we have 45 million paying a student debt that many of them cannot afford to pay.

So, what our campaign is about and what our administration will be about is rethinking America, understanding that all of our people – when I say “all,” I also mean the undocumented in this country – that all of our people are entitled to basic human rights.

Democrats once understood that illegal aliens depress working-class wages. That’s why Democrats used to oppose open borders. In 1974, even Bernie sang a different song about illegal laborers:

The Vermont senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, as a gadfly political candidate in 1974, railed against the presence of 351 Jamaican guest workers in his state’s apple orchards, which were seeing a record harvest.

For socialist Sanders, then 33, the situation supported his contention that businesses were yet again selling out U.S. residents in favor of cheap labor.

[snip]

Back in 1974, Sanders’s rhetorical target was local orchard owners. Vermonters, in their view, were unwilling to do the grueling work, which involved carrying around a ladder and heavy bucket of apples for eight hours a day. The orchard owners said that Jamaicans had more flexibility and experience in agricultural work. Unlike native Vermonters, they were under no expectation of permanent employment.

[snip]

“With the Vermont unemployment rate one of the highest in the nation, I could never support importing foreign workers when our own people are out of work,” said Sanders, who was collecting unemployment insurance at the time.

Bernie has changed his tune, as have all the other Democrats who once opposed open borders, because they need new voters – especially voters escaping disastrous socialist economies in pursuit of better, more profitable socialism. That may not be their express mindset but many of them, given the chance to vote, whether legally or illegally, are drawn to socialism.

What’s most pernicious about Bernie’s promises is that he’s forcing all Americans to pay for failed Democrat policies. Rental housing stock in Democrat strongholds is expensive because they embraced rent control and impaired landlords’ abilities to evict non-paying tenants. Housing stock in Democrat-run regions is expensive because of restrictive zoning and insane limitations in service to “anthropogenic climate change.”

The homeless are multiplying on the streets because Democrats invite them in by providing them with free food, free drugs, and the promise that they won’t be harassed or arrested because of their anti-social behavior. Democrats also pushed to close the institutions that once housed the severely mentally ill, leaving them on the streets. (Watch the following video only if you have a strong stomach.)

Higher education is more expensive because Democrat-run colleges have drastically increased their institutions’ administrative employees while leaving the same number of teachers. These costly administrative increases are all in service to diversity mania.

And finally, speaking of higher education, students voluntarily take on this debt. No one makes them acquire $300,000 in debt at a university with an endowment bigger than the GDP of foreign countries in order to acquire a degree in LGBTQ puppetry.

Original Article