In a new Vdare column "Immigration - is the Viagra of the state," Peter Brimelow tries to appeal to libertarians by suggesting that immigration leads to bigger government.
However this depends on what kind of government you're referring to.
Immigration has certainly increased what some paleoconservatives refer to as the "liberal therapeutic state," but it's arguably been a disaster for the developmental state of which New Zealand was an early pioneer.
In terms of government investment in such things as science and technology, transport and energy infrastructure, public housing, and technical education, the golden age for the English-speaking West was the era between 1925 and 1965, a period when there was little non-western immigration, particularly in the US.
For advocates of affirmative action, global government, mass university education, anti-smoking campaigns and hate-speech laws, the liberal golden age began in the mid 1960s, when non-western immigration took-off in earnest.
Admittedly there was a classical liberal attempt to trim back the excesses of the left-liberal state in the 1980s, led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but this movement ran out of steam in the early 1990s.
Brimelow does correctly point out though, that while immigration may discourage support for the state among the majority of native citizens, it has little appeal for the immigrants and their government and big business supporters, who stand to gain more, at least in the short-to-medium term, from a bigger state.
Subsequently there is potential for a paleo-libertarian approach to gain public support where globalist, pro-immigration libertarianism has failed.
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A question is, "who will pay for all of this?" The industrial supporters of immigration have shipped their manufacturing overseas. The local middle class tax base then takes a hit. Illegals do not pay taxes. As you point out, upper-middle class people have less in common with those who demand services; this diminishes their willingness to pay for such things. Who pays?
It was very unfortunate that the big government and large scale immigration coincided. Welfare can only be affordable when people are ashamed and reluctant to take it. If there is a paleo-conservative realization that the system must be abandon before it sinks our ship, that would be great. Because social benefits are now a self-reinforcing immigration magnet. More people come and so become a bigger interest group demanding their right to services.
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