“It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state,” Milton Friedman warned the Wall Street Journal over twenty years ago over their fixation on an open borders policy at the time.
It is not very obvious to the Democratic presidential contenders.
On Wednesday evening during the first night of the NBC News Democratic Presidential Debates, candidates jumped on the open borders bandwagon when former HUD Secretary Julián Castro advocated decriminalizing crossing the border illegally.
On Thursday night, Savanah Guthrie asked the ten candidates on stage that included frontrunners former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont if the government-run health care plans they advocate would cover undocumented immigrants.
Every last one raised their hand. Watch:
If Democrats want immigration reform this is how not to get it.
Sanders pointed to Canada’s government-run system as a model of what Americans could do (forget the fact Canada has a population over 37 million while the United States has a population of over 329 million people.
Here’s the thing, Canada’s healthcare system is available to citizens and permanent legal residents only. The UK offers health care for its permanent residents, but immigrants who are not going to be permanent residents have to pay.
Even Canada and the UK realize they can’t provide health care for everyone within their borders.
