You have to hand it to libertarians: they'll try to profit by setting your rivers on fire, then try to profit by selling you fresh water.

Enter Steven Greenhut of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, who offers "The Immigration Debate Is Over in California" [1] in Reason Magazine.

He sideways admits how much damage libertarian-style loose borders immigration policies have done to California, such as establishing de facto one party rule. His solution isn't to stem the tide of massive immigration. Instead, he wants to double-down: he wants to help the far-left in other states with even more immigration.

...The debate over immigration - legal and otherwise, and especially otherwise - is now over. Even some Republicans are joining with Democrats to promote the "path to citizenship" for people here illegally.

The reason is obvious. Democrats - buoyed by overwhelming support from the state's Latino voters - won every constitutional office in California and gained supermajorities in the Assembly and state Senate. Even the small band of legislative Republicans is noticing the growing percentage of Latino voters in GOP-leaning districts.

...Some Republicans now are embracing what party activists still refer to as "amnesty" for those immigrants already here illegally. Others are supporting the Obama administration's plan to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. Others still are accepting the once-radical notion of granting drivers' licenses for "undocumented" - and this is the proper use of that loaded word here - drivers.

There no doubt will be a fight over such matters at the party confab in Sacramento and elsewhere, with grassroots activists taking a "hell no" position, but the battle is over. The California party's future is iffy right now, which is bad news given how desperately the state needs serious pushback against the "tax, spend, and tax again" policies of the state's Democratic Party.

...My views have changed over the years, but tend toward the "open" side given my libertarian dislike of government policies that stop individuals from charting their own course in life. But critics raise some serious questions about Balkanization, and the costly impact on the state's infrastructure and public services. The right has been unduly mean-spirited in its rhetoric on illegal immigration and the left has unconscionably used the issue to divide our state along ethnic lines. Never mind all that. The debate is done because the politics changed.

...Instead of fixating on immigration policies, the GOP needs to focus on what policy geeks call the "politics of aspiration." The party needs to advocate policies that help all Californians improve their lives. These are right in the GOP wheelhouse - regulatory reform, pro-growth economics, improved education through competition, union reform, and private-sector jobs creation. This is the old Jack Kemp model of selling the benefits of the free market to Democratic constituencies...

If the GOP had held the line on immigration 30 or even 20 years ago, they'd be in a much better position. Libertarians would also be in a much better position. Instead, quislings like Steve Greenhut and Allan Hoffenblum held sway, and we see the result: a "costly impact on the state's infrastructure and public services" and the Democrats (many of whom are quite far-left) gaining "supermajorities in the Assembly and state Senate".

Now, the same quislings want that to go national. Don't let them: fight Reason Magazine and other Koch family outfits like Americans for Prosperity. Even the libertarian base should do that, because their immigration policies reduce further any possibility of libertarian ideas gaining purchase.

--------------------------------
[1] reason . com/archives/2013/03/01/
immigration-debate-over-in-california