May 7, 2013 9:54AM
Heritage’s Flawed Immigration Analysis
By
Alex Nowrasteh
Share
In the Washington Post today, Jim DeMint and Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation invoke the free-market pantheon in arguing their anti-immigration stance: “The economist Milton Friedman warned that the United States cannot have open borders and an extensive welfare state.”
They’re halfway right about that. What Friedman actually said was that immigration is “a good thing for the United States…so long as it’s illegal.” He meant that open immigration is highly beneficial to the economy, provided those productive but inexpensive laborers do not have access to welfare.
Friedman later wrote that, “There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state.” Friedman’s problem was with the welfare state, not immigration