Two articles[1] from yesterday caught my eye, as they both pertained to the issue of illegal immigration.  More specifically, they pertained to granting in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants.  As we know, Governor O’Malley recently signed a bill into law that would do the same for illegal immigrants in Maryland (along with 229 other bills).  This is a topic that is polarizing the nation.

But is there a sound justification for all this division?  I submit that there is not.  I know that many see this as a cut-and-dry case of law-breaking, just as many others see this as a cut-and-dry case of racism.  Again, I submit that it is neither.

At its heart, this is an issue of government spending and policy.  It is an issue of the welfare state.  It is an issue of how you perceive “the pie.”  Allow me to explain.

Economists are always coming up with clever (or not-so-clever) metaphors to explain the economy.  Example: The economy, they say, is not a fixed pie that we must divide up into smaller and smaller pieces the more people wish to share in it.  That’s what we call a “zero-sum game” -- a better analogy for that would be a game of poker where someone can win only when someone else loses.

But let’s think about that for a second.  Did the average American lose money when millions upon millions of Chinese subsistence farmers were able to take jobs in factories producing goods for sale in Wal-Mart?  True, some people lost their jobs, but at the same time many jobs in shipping, retail, and any number of related industries were created.  And, of course, most people benefitted from those low, low prices -- even if their benefits of the many seemed smaller than the losses of the few.

People who look at the pie as fixed fail to understand the dynamic nature of the economy.  It grows and changes -- just as we do.  How else do we explain the current recession?  Obviously, our economy (the pie) must grow too, or else each recession would leave us permanently worse off than we were before, and with no growth in our past we would still be rubbing sticks together in a cave to cook our mammoth meat.

Now that we have that fact established, let’s turn back to illegal immigration.  My thoughts on the issue fall somewhere in between the two sides.  I agree that illegal is illegal, and to help illegal immigrants out too much is tantamount to calling all legal immigrants “chumps.”  At the same time, I look at those who blame America’s fiscal problems largely on illegal immigrants with little respect.  Placement in jobs or in schools should be based on achievement and ability alone.  Period.

But what about government handouts?  These days, those are given out rather indiscriminately.  And what have we got to show for it?  A lagging economic recovery, people sitting on unemployment for over a year, and more and more people signing up for welfare and food stamps.  That’s what.  Clearly, throwing money at our problems is not the way to make them go away.

I once had the pleasure of listening to an economist friend of mine explain to a mutual acquaintance why we place so many limits on immigration these days.  “You could open your home to one homeless person and feed him, clothe him, and help him find a job,” he said.  “You could probably even open your home to two homeless people.  But the more you offer each one, the fewer you can take in.”

That’s what is happening in the United States.  We have made so many things “free” to all citizens that we are having trouble opening our homes to too many newcomers.  And, lest we forget, this “free stuff” isn’t actually free -- we all pay for it every day in our taxes.

Imagine how much more you could afford to do if your taxes were cut, drastically, back to levels matching those before the Great Depression, when the United Welfare States of America had their genesis.  Imagine, too, how many more people we could welcome to this fair country if we stopped trying to help everyone out with “free stuff” and just allowed people to take care of themselves.  People have done it for years.

This whole debate would be unnecessary.  And then maybe we could devote some time to figuring out what to do with all our extra money.