This week I got my "The New Individualist" from TOC. Which by the way is not to imply that I recommend the publication; I have only received a few issues. Judging by this issue though I'd definitely NOT recommend it.

In it the article "The Golden Door" by Ed Hudgins, while having some redeeming elements, completely undercuts itself in the end by promoting a truly awful solution to the immigration problem. His idea: Let immigrants come and get to opt out of our welfare and social security programs in exchange for giving up benefits.

The motive is obvious: to attempt to solve the problem of immigration burdening the welfare state. It's a serious problem: given the welfare state, it is hard to recommend the kind of open immigration we really ought to have. If this immigration were permitted as it could and should be, freely letting non-violent people immigrate, the welfare system would completely break down or the country would collapse with huge tax burdens. One or the other would have to go: the welfare state or our prosperity.

Hudgins attempts to skirt the contradiction by just declaring that all immigrants won't have to pay taxes into the welfare system (no social security or medicare taxes and lower income taxes), but they don't get the benefits either. Well how many of us would opt out like that? Everyone. What's the net effect? Hudgins just created a new privileged class--the immigrants--unequal to others under the law. This is a more fundamental breach than what he started trying to patch up in the first place! Now instead of having just a welfare state, we also have the precedent of an explicitly government sanctioned two-class system to fix--a deeper contradiction with individual rights than the one we started with!