In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is - i.e., he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts - i.e., he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance.

From Ayn Rand, "Philosophy and a Sense of Life," The Romantic Manifesto, 30.

Were Conservatives to find themselves denounced as Marxists, they would take great offense and probably confusion at the accusation. They consider themselves as far as possible from the Marxist view on politics, which in many instances is true.  On the issue of immigration, however, the conservatives have bought into Marxist economics on every level.

Popular Marxist thought views the economy as a finite pile of loot. This ignores the dynamic nature of an economy and of the process of production, and is one of the many reasons Marxist economies have invariably collapsed in a pile of mismanagement and waste. Conservatives, coming from this same premise, see the economy as a big pile of jobs, to be distributed to deserving Americans before anyone else.

Therefore, as Jeremy Beck does in this article, they conclude that the more immigrants who come here, the fewer jobs there will be for Americans. The economy grows at only a certain rate to them, a fixed number independent of other variables, and so the US economy can only "absorb" a certain number of immigrants per year.

This is, of course, pure nonsense. Marxist rhetoric aside, there is not a big tree labeled "jobs" that we all come to pick from when we need employment. The amount of jobs in the economy is not a function of how many immigrants come year to year, but of government policies and of how much people are willing to work for. Removing productive workers, far from "freeing up jobs for Americans," will result in businesses closing down, moving or growing slower as the cheap labor that allowed them to prosper is deported.

These facts have been well-documented and are backed up by business interests all over the country; growth (and thus additional jobs) is made much more difficult without immigrant labor, both low and high skilled. Conservatives have in turn denounced these businessmen by telling them they're unpatriotic, greedy people who put "profits before patriotism."

But economic law does not bend to rhetoric, no matter how much conservatives would like it to. The current unemployment rate will worsen, not get better, with the deportation of millions of hard workers from our shores and the true cause of unemployment (the disastrous intervention in the economy by the government under both Democratic and Republican leadership) will continue to go unaddressed.

Rather than scapegoat hard working people simply trying to make a living in the United States, Conservatives must repudiate the disastrous policies that they have previously supported in order to allow the real producers of the economy - the businessmen - to get back to work making profits and expanding their businesses.