They came before we had a welfare state because we had prosperity, then they helped create the welfare state.
I don't agree with this theory, I think it is historically unsound. It is based on a failure to correctly assess the immense effect of the Federal Reserve on US politics, beginning in 1913, and the world wars. No, we did not have a massive Mexican immigration problem in 1913.
The overriding purpose of the Federal Reserve -- far and above all other secondary purposes it may serve -- is (a) to fund political bribery (aka "lobbying", but it's not just lobbying when you have a printing-press) and (b) welfare for the rich (primarily in the form of bank bailouts). In other words, the Fed is socialism for the Davos class. All those billionaires are raking in fat, risk-free, guaranteed dividends because they are all part of a system that's "too big to fail" and guaranteed to be bailed out with the printing-press. These are mainly hereditary, old-world families, with a few nouveau-riche permitted to enter the club and learn the ropes if they prove to be sufficiently adept at licking boots. Between the establishment of the Fed, and the first and second world wars, there was a massive influx of political elites from other countries, to the US. Those immigres were the parents, grandparents or great-grandparents of the bureaucrats staffing all the Federal agencies, and the term-limit busting Congressional dinosaurs which we call "the Swamp".
So, the Swamp isn't just doe-eyed Red State politicians who flew off to Washington to fix the Social Security deficit, and then got bought out and corrupted by lobbyists. That's part of it, but those are actually the bit-players. The Swamp is deeply, deeply entrenched, and our foreign entanglements have brought
alll the chickens home to roost, right in the place where they can do the most damage to ordinary Americans: Washington, DC. It was all fun when we were chanting Rah-Rah-Go-America, Bomb-Those-Towel-Heads, and other such single-digit IQ WWE nonsense. But the actual cost to us is the present political reality. We bombed foreign people and they sent their best minds over here to "persuade" us to change, that is, to infiltrate and subvert the Central Nervous System of American politics. And they have been wildly successful.
Yes, we have a demographic war being waged on our southern border but the lack of a wall is not even remotely close to being the cause of that war. It's just a band-aid that will help the DC Swamp ignore the problem and kick it down the another half-generation so our children will have to deal with it. Plus, it dovetails in many ways with the increase of Federal power, which DC always wants.
We will get rid of the welfare state much faster if we stop the invasion and a wall/heavy patrols are the way to do that.
I would agree to many political changes
if there were some real (tangible) concession of something else. For example, if we close all or nearly all overseas US military bases, I would consider it a fair trade to redirect the excess military personnel to border/coastal security (or support). Building a wall would be a trivial undertaking with those kinds of resources, so why not. But just adding more expenses/personnel to an already busted political problem is no real change. It's just throwing bad money after good. The Dems are also wrong, because they really do want the border to be open. I'm just saying that I see no reason to change the
status quo until somebody proposes a policy-change that addresses the root-cause to at least
some extent, even if small. I think Trump's policy is less bad than the Democrat policy, but the primary value would be if he is using it in the background to twist their arm on the underlying root-causes. I hope he is doing that, but there is no way for us to know from the outside. "Do X, or you get more wall" is just fine. But "More wall" all by itself is pointless. It will fail to accomplish what you hope for, and will end up just playing into the Swamp's hands, as always.
The side that benefits politically from them either gets them citizenship or provides them with fraudulent ID, you can minimize the fraud but the more of them there are the harder it becomes.
Yes, demographic warfare is real, but you should always be suspicious of quick solutions to long-term problems.
Our ancestors failed to understand that to some extent all of life is a war, if you are to survive you must have some degree of wartime controls on immigration and trade both.
I hard disagree. All of life is a war
in this fallen world; as believers, we are to reject this world's "eat or be eaten"-calculus, lock, stock and barrel; and to the extent that the US is supposed to be a Christian nation, it would have to do likewise. As it stands, the US is a rank abomination in the sight of God. From a biblical standpoint, our nation is easily in the top-10 most evil nations in the world, maybe even top-5. We certainly do
more total evil than any other nation... it's not even a competition. But some nations commit evils that are more deeply blasphemous to God, so it's a toss-up.
Hard and low limits on immigration, tariffs that are higher on countries more opposed to you, and absolute embargoes on outright enemies like the CCP.
We would not have the welfare state or any of the other infringements on our liberty, and we would be much richer and stronger if we had followed such policies from the beginning.
That's your view, but it's not the Republic that the founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution. We are to be a nation devoid of foreign entanglements, free and open to all alike who want to trade with our businessmen. Any American businessman who is trading with somebody overseas would only be doing so if it profits him. So, all voluntary trade is automatically profitable to the US. Economic warfare is poison and it's part of the poison by which the Fed/Swamp have tranq'd our entire country and rendered us completely helpless to their rapacious plunder. We participate in their poison to our own ruin. But I'm not naive, I know it's not going away. But I'm constantly reminded of that phrase in Ezekiel... "I will bring the most wicked of nations..." (Ez. 7:24) that is, I'm going to bring a people in judgment against you who
do your own evil far better than you yourself do. Whether from within or without, I do not know, but I can see the setup already forming. The United States is about to be struck down to the ground like no nation has ever been struck before.
