The jackboots crash through the door of a citizen’s home, disturbing her family at 6 AM. This is the second time it has happened to her.

Of course, the state can’t do anything right, including illegal alien roundups, without intolerable abuses of liberty. They did round up some illegals, however, “family men” and churchgoers, as one nun complains.

It is clearer than ever that the only acceptable answer to burdensome mass immigration caused by government distortions in the market is to eliminate those distortions, to repeal the welfare state, get rid of automatic citizenship (while refusing to violate the natural rights of non-citizens), and eliminate the regulatory web that sometimes makes hiring an illegal unnaturally attractive. As Ron Paul heroically points out, in a free society we’d likely want even more immigrants, more laborers, and so the answer is not to scapegoat them but rather to eliminate the bad incentives for troublesome immigration. The “round ‘em up” Tancredo position, which Paul has wonderfully distanced himself from in the CNN interview below, is doomed to fail, except in wrecking the lives of migrants and citizens alike while expanding the police state and destroying private wealth. If people think the state is mostly not enforcing the laws now, consider how much damage and futility would come from its meager enforcement were amplified to the level of the drug war. I dread what would come if mass deportations, constant ID checks, and further intrusion into family and business life were to transpire.

Thanks to Jason Ditz for the link.