If you had "Cher discovers the paradox of open borders and the welfare state" on your 2019 bingo card, please collect your earnings.



I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+🇺🇸Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More — Cher (@cher) April 14, 2019



Cher, welcome to the deplorables. President Trump thanks you.





While Trump and I may sound glib here, it's honestly worth unpacking this revelation. Cher unwittingly stumbled onto the most existential question the Democratic Party must answer: Do they want open borders or a welfare state? Because you can't have both.

In theory, I'm about as much as a Rothbardian dove on immigration as you can imagine. I'm every coastal strawman that Ann Coulter has ever fought with, but in earnest. I love cheap labor. I love cheap stuff. I love maximizing the efficiency of the labor market and enabling everyone to take advantage of their comparative advantages. In a theoretical universe, the only immigration restrictions I would want for people seeking work visas would be related to national security concerns and rates of cultural assimilation.

But we have a massive welfare state, and one that's deeply susceptible to being taken advantage of by people, including legal and illegal immigrants, who do not pay taxes.

In 2015, the Census Bureau found that 51% of legal and illegal immigrant households use Medicaid, cash programs including Supplemental Security Income and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, food programs, and housing programs. In 2018, they discovered that figure increased to 58% and actually soars to a whopping 63% if also accounting for earned income tax credits as a welfare source. An astounding 70% of immigrants here for a decade or longer are on at least one form of welfare. All of this ignores the access people who don't pay taxes have to emergency room services, Title X facilities, and every other public good, from roads to parks, that taxpayers fund unconditionally.

Cher, probably without knowing it, focused on the single group of people hurt the most unfairly by open borders: veterans. In Los Angeles, veterans — the single group of people the nation's entered a moral and legal contract with to ensure welfare for — comprise nearly 4,000 of the city's homeless population.

While the city's resources ought to go to getting those who put their lives on the line for the nation out of the hepatitis-ridden streets of Skid Row, instead Los Angeles shells out over $1 billion annually to illegal immigrants.

For what it's worth, even socialist hero Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., understands this conflict. While he speaks thesame language as his fellow left-wingers in the Democratic Party, he's still caught flack from the Left for conceding that you can't gift unconditional free stuff to an endlessly increasing pool of people. In order for "socialist" Scandanavian countries that the American Left so admires to continue to function, they've been rapidly tightening their immigration policies, rejecting refugees and admitting fewer citizens. Countries with vast welfare programs that have failed to do so, such as France, have devolved into chaos.

For what it's worth, I have to hand it to Cher for changing her tune from two years ago.



Those Who Can Must Take a DREAMER In2 Their Home & Protect Them‼️I’m Ready 2 Do This & 🙏🏻Others in MY BUSINESS WILL DO THE SAME‼️SANCTUARY — Cher (@cher) September 5, 2017



Life's all about trade-offs, but few are more consequential to the fate of our nation's catastrophic deficit, question of culture, and national security than that of welfare and immigration.