How edifying to see that Mike Pence is against welfare for illegals. Unfortunately, his example shows the problem with focusing on this issue, rather than on immigration more broadly. Banning welfare for illegals is productive only when it’s used like the ban on partial-birth abortion — expose the extremism of your opponents by prohibiting a ludicrous practice that everyone’s already against but one that your opponents are forced to embrace because of interest-group pressure. And that seems to be how it turned out last night’s walkout, and so kudos to the House GOP.

But the reason I’m not a fan of focusing on welfare use by immigrants is that the issue is often — even usually — used as a way to blunt broader and more useful restrictions on immigration, as if the pro-abortion crowd embraced the partial-birth ban as a way of preventing even more extensive limits. This was what Sen. Spence “Defender of the Melting Pot” Abraham and his ilk did in 1996, when they succeeded in killing the proposed modest cuts in legal immigration partly by offering in their stead limits on immigrant welfare eligibility (limits that were quickly rolled back and ultimately rendered a nullity).

In short, it’s bad for immigrants to be on welfare, and even worse for illegals to be on welfare. Welfare is important as part of a broader critique — both political and intellectual — of immigration. But on its own it’s usually a diversion promoted by supporters of the status quo.