The folks over at the Division of Labor blog think that immigration restrictionism may correlate with generous welfare states.
This was a comment on Paul Krugman's column about how the U.S. doesn't have a generous social safety net because white America is too racist to help out poor black people (I posted on it here).
The essential argument is that the bigger the welfare state, the more attractive the country would be to layabouts who seek to abuse the system. Thereofre, the bigger the welfare state, the more restrictive the immigration policy must be to ensure that you get productive immigrants rather than thos who would burden the system.
Interesting hypothesis, but I think that the causation probably runs both ways, and also in oblique directions.
That is all.
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