It annoys me beyond belief when people propose mutually exclusive goals. When politicians do that, it normally means they will do neither. Or, in exceptionally horrible cases, it means they will actually try to do both simultaneously and have them crash into each other like trains on full speed.
You can’t have open borders coexist with a welfare system. It’s one or the other. Pick one and stick to it.
You also can’t have a massive influx of millions of immigrants coexist with a simultaneous shifting of public higher ed costs onto taxpayers. Immigrants will want to go to college, their college education will be far more expensive than that of non-immigrants because they will require enormous language remediation, public colleges that are now barred from charging tuition will not be able to carry the burden. Of course, there will be a massive surge of love for immigrants as a result of all this and collective happiness will ensue. Or not.
Yes, it would be fantastic to have all these things and free apple pie. But it’s not possible. We laugh at “I’m pro-life and pro-guns” but this kind of empty fantasizing is no better.
P.S. And since I’m at it, you also can’t make cheaper public higher ed coexist with strict government control over speech codes. Adding one after another Ethics Compliance and Multicultural Diversity centers and offices does not bring costs down. It simply does not. This isn’t even math, it’s first-grade arithmetic.
Clarissa's Blog 
very, very good point 🙂
you can have limited immigration and limited welfare state. Not saying that is good or not, but the options are:
1) welfare state (higher taxes), limited immigration, no open borders
2) open borders, no welfare state
3) limited immigration, limited welfare state, and limited taxes.
You correctly summarize the one option which is nonsensical. :open borders and welfare state. That definitely doesn’t work.
Many conservatives want option 3, and also want the limited immigration to be skilled, educted immigrants such as yourself.
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Any proposal that goes against basic logic is wrong. And a strong welfare state always requires impenetrable borders.
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If your country has very harsh weather conditions you can, because less people will be prepared to tolerate it even if there are other benefits on offer?
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What are weather conditions compared to life in Syria, a poor African country or any other poor and relatively uncivilized place ?! I think you underestimate how horrible some places are.
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” life in Syria, a poor African country or any other poor and relatively uncivilized place ”
The problem with that theory is that it’s not the worst places generating large groups of migrants. One of the biggest source countries on the Libya to Italy run (thanks Hillary!) is Senegal which is peaceful and prosperous by Sub-Saharan African standards.
One of the first things to happen when living standards start to increase is that the local population’s expectations grow faster than any economy can. When educational levels are low then this gives rise to magical thinking “The dirt in France must be magic! If I can make it to French dirt I will be as rich as the French!”
(No, magic thinking is not unique to Africa, it was actually a big part of the USSR’s policies in the 1920s and 1930s “Rich countries have industry and factories that make many nice things! If we build factories we will have many nice things!” it didn’t work and the USSR became the first country to combine industriatlization and famine).
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England is hardly known for its fine weather, how many people would be living there with open borders? 100 million? 200 million? More?
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Or Sweden.
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IIRC the saying used to be “diversity, democracy and welfare: pick any two”. The idea was that no society could have all three at the same time.
the USSR had diversity and welfare (crappy, but existed on paper) but no democracy
the US (until the 1960s) had diversity and democracy but not much welfare
Sweden until the 1970s had democracy and welfare but no diversity (unless you count Finns)
Attempts to try to have all three in the US and Sweden have not gone… well.
One of the reasons that the EU is failing is that the leadership is determined to try to have all three and no one is buying it (and instead of learning the leadership is doubling down on trying to create a state of affairs that simply cannot exist).
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