Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Why America Will Regret Restrictionism as it Does Segregationism

Conservatives are resorting to ever more draconian measures to take back the country from "illegal immigrants," points out Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia in her latest column at The Daily. The latest state to declare an all-out jihad is Alabama. But as with slavery and segregation, they are using the government to commit sins that will eventually require even more government to undo.

She notes:

Every country has a right to control its borders. But both liberal and illiberal immigration policies are consistent with this right. Dispatching drones and erecting electric fences to prevent willing foreign workers from being hired by willing domestic employers are tactics more suitable to a police state than a free republic…

Closing off economic opportunities and tearing apart families will ghettoize a subset of Hispanics, just as segregation and Jim Crow ghettoized Southern blacks. Right now, a country caught up in a restrictionist fury might not care.

But a civilized society doesn't forever tolerate such blatant inhumanity. Ultimately, some triggering event forces it to confront its turpitudes.

Whole thing here.