Rick Santorum: Improved on Immigration; Dense on Family Planning

When Rick Santorum was a two-term United States Senator (1995-2007), he was a staunch advocate for an illegal alien amnesty. Santorum was one of the many so called RINOs that then-President Bush counted on to deliver a comprehensive immigration reform package to his Hispanic supporters.

One of the most important things that amnesty advocates overlook, perhaps purposely, is the long term impact that an open immigration policy has on population growth. More immigration begets more immigration. The new immigrants have families, some of them much larger than replacement level. Eventually, the immigrants can petition their families so that pattern of more and more people continues indefinitely.

In recent weeks on the campaign trail, however, Santorum’s thinking about immigration has grown more enlightened. As a presidential candidate, Santorum has spoken out against chain migration by calling for it to be limited to “immediate family” correctly criticized the Diversity Visa lottery “silly.”

Here’s Santorum’s chain migration policy:

“Immigrants should come to this country based on a whole bunch of different criteria and one of them should not be chain immigration where relatives come into the country because somebody is here.  Immediate family is one thing, but extended family is a very different thing.”

On the Diversity Visa:

“And the fact that we have a lottery system for people to come into this country is, in a word, silly.  People should not be in a lottery to determine whether they come to this country.”

Listen to Santorum’s complete immigration platform here.

While Santorum’s evolved immigration stance is encouraging, he has a limited understanding of the adverse impact on all Americans when individuals selfishly decide to have large families. Santorum has six children.

Last Sunday during his appearance on FOX News, Santorum called for tripling the $1,000 per child credit.

According to Santorum:

"Children are the greatest resource we have. They're the natural resource that creates wealth in this country." [Rick Santorum on FOX News Sunday: We Need to Increase Birth Rates, Huffington Post, January 15, 2012]

Such statements mislead and encourage larger families. Children aren’t a “natural resource” but rather consumers of natural resources. As for creating wealth, too few of them become productive enough citizens to the extent you could refer to them as wealth creators. Any “wealth” they may generate would be far down the road. In the meantime, schools, roads, hospitals and housing (sprawl) must be built to accommodate them.

If the federal government adopted Santorum’s tripled tax credit plan, it would be irresponsibly subsidizing larger families. In the interest of sustainability, the government should consider a flat annual credit—for example $3,000—that would cover children under 21 whether a family has one or six kids.

Santorum opposes contraception even when practiced by married couples. [Rick Santorum Is Coming for Your Birth Control, by Irin Carmon, Salon.com, January 4, 2012]

By encouraging lower immigration levels, Santorum has moved in the right direction. Fewer people mean a better quality of life for all Americans.

On family planning, however, he has a long way to go.