Michael Tanner of Cato, meet reality (immigrants using food stamps to send food back home)

Per the New York Post (link), some immigrants from Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti buy food in the U.S. which they then send to their relatives in their home countries. Some of them are using food stamps to buy the food, although the article gives no clue as to the number of such welfare queens.

The article quotes Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute as saying:

"I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong. The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid."

That's ironic given those in the Cato sphere who call remittances a good form of foreign aid; examples in [1] here.

More importantly, this is yet another example of libertarians running up against the impacts of their policies. They support ending or sharply limiting the welfare state (which is never going to happen) and at the same time they support mass immigration (which other establishment leaders are more than willing to make happen). The result: more immigrants who use welfare programs, including in cases like this. The only realistic way to reduce cases like this is to reduce immigration, but acknowledging and accepting reality isn't something libertarians are capable of.

Less immigration would also force leaders of foreign countries to stop thinking of the U.S. as a pressure release valve but might instead force them to take care of their own people. That way they might be able to buy more of our goods than waiting for them to arrive in barrels.