Just a few moments ago, a conservative Facebook friend of mine posted the following:

Oh. My. Hell. I was stopped dead in my tracks, and before I knew it, I wrote the following:

So we should be more like Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea?!? Really?!? Instead of creating a police state, how about we we open immigration to any honest person willing to earn a new life for themselves, as America used to do?

Right now, our impossibly byzantine immigration laws force almost anyone eager to make a better life for himself and his family to break the law. That’s neither just nor consistent with individual rights. The fact is that immigrants are the victims of awful laws, and they are right to break those laws.

What would you do if you happened to be born in some repressive pest-hole, rather than in the land of opportunity? Would you passively resign yourself to suffer and die? Or would you break an unjust law for the opportunity of a life worth living for you and your family? If you have any ambition to live a successful and happy life, you would become an illegal immigrant.

As with all statist laws, responsibility for the many problems with illegal immigration are the responsibility of anti-immigration lawmakers and voters. Don’t blame the victim.

AMERICANS are the reason that America is in debt. Illegal immigrants didn’t vote us into our current vast welfare state: we did that all by ourselves — and yes, I mean not just Democrats, but Republicans too. We’ll not fix that by pointing fingers at scapegoats.

For rational ideas on immigration, see Mother of Exiles.

Update: See also Craig Biddle’s article Immigration and Individual Rights and my webcast discussion of proper immigration policy.