Ironic: Dick Armey's support for massive immigration leads to more spending, bigger government

Back in 1995, Tea Parties leader Dick Armey of FreedomWorks spoke at the Cato Institute about various topics including immigration (cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-ja-da.html), and his remarks are incredibly ironic: his immigration policies lead to the opposite of the other policies he claims to support. Most of what he supported then has since occurred albeit on a smaller scale, and we know how that worked out.

Note that Armey still supports massive immigration, as shown by recent comments [1] and by this 2007 video. Whether he's figured out the irony part or whether he's still unable to do that isn't clear. In addition to claiming that his opponents want to end all immigration and using phrases like "anti-immigration", he promoted brain-draining the world and denigrated U.S. citizens:

Anti-immigration has always been ironic, because throughout our history newcomers have been a source of strength, not weakness. America still attracts the world's best talent. And surely that is no liability. Think of it. We can avail ourselves of much of the world's intellectual wealth simply by opening our doors. America never has to grow old. We can always take in new talent and new ideas and new blood. No ruling elite can dominate us for very long, because we always have younger, smarter, more entrepreneurial spirits willing and eager to move up.

What's disgustingly ironic about that is that the U.S. is indeed in the grasp of a "ruling elite" that forces mass immigration on the U.S. public against their wishes.

The impulse to limit immigration is really a manifestation of the protectionist impulse. And it's misguided. It's a desire to use government's monopoly of coercive power to benefit oneself at the expense of somebody else. And that, as Hayek taught us, is self-defeating. But the biggest problem with the closed-border idea is that it embraces the liberals' world view. And thus it leads logically down the path to bigger government.

Of course, he has the "coercive power" part reversed: the "ruling elite" uses their power to force massive immigration on the U.S., such as by using the media to smear those who simply support enforcing our laws. As for the last part, there's a reason why the Democrats support massive immigration: it gives them more power. Dick Armey would help the Democrats expand their power base, leading to bigger government and the opposite of what he claims to want.

The rest of it is along the same lines: he wants to "shrink the welfare state", but his immigration policy would give more power to those who want to expand it; the same with his claim to support "scrap[ing] multiculturalism in the schools and giv[ing] parents real school choice". Is Armey unable to figure out how that will never happen as long as people like him keep supporting growing the Democrats' power base? Or, is there something else involved?

Also, his is the first instance I've seen of the safe legal orderly talking point:

Should we have an orderly immigration policy? Of course... our goal should be to make immigration more orderly, not more restrictive...

[1] From this 11/08/09 article:

[Armey] also has a more liberal view of immigration than many in his party. “Reagan went to Berlin and said, ‘Tear down this wall,’ ” Armey said. “We went to San Diego and said, ‘Build a fence.’ It was just stupid. You have Hispanics saying, ‘I’m not going to vote for those guys because they don’t like me.’ ”

Comments

Just another idiotic, big mouth, no brain politician. The main characteristic of this immigration tsunami has been apparent for a long time: they're mostly poor Hispanics. Especially the illegals. It's obvious they cannot create enough value-added wealth themselves to support a first world lifestyle. (That's why they come from second and third world countries; get it?)