‘My Social Worker Gave It to Us’

The fact that she didn’t know who Rubio is was unremarkable; normal people (unlike you and me) don’t follow out-of-state politicians. But what do you want to bet the social worker in question is a government employee? And the fact that immigrants, legal or not, are in need of taxpayer-funded social workers says something about how messed up our immigration system is.

About one-third of households headed by legal immigrants use welfare and close to half of illegal households. The lefties (plus their libertarian fellow-travelers) respond by correctly pointing out that if you control for income, their rate of use is lower — in other words, poor immigrants are slightly less likely to use welfare than poor Americans. Another way to express this is that immigration imports a better class of underclass.

But why should any immigrants be on welfare? Since it’s a discretionary federal program, it would seem that no one should be admitted who is likely to need us to pay for her social worker. (That’s what the law requires, though it is ignored.) And yet you have mooks like Mark Zuckerberg talking about having more skilled immigration but pushing for amnesty and increased importation of high-school dropouts, a large share of whom are guaranteed to end up on the dole.

And finally, any congressional attempts to limit immigrant access to welfare — even if they were sincere — would have to be implemented in the field by someone. Who? Social workers! Does anyone think the person who gave this protester her sign is part of a profession that will rigorously enforce GOP-crafted restrictions on welfare access by the “provisional” amnesty recipients?

Bueller? Bueller?