Tea Parties and Amnesty: Let's be clear

Editor:  A version of this post is also published at Refugee Resettlement Watch, here.

Readers should know that some inside the beltway Open Border Republicans have been working very hard to steer the Tea Party agenda away from any position on so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform (amnesty).  But, today, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in a post at National Review Online pops a festering boil by making it very clear that Dick Armey (Freedom Works) and Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) are indeed advocates for Amnesty when really the majority of  Tea Party grassroots cut their political eye-teeth in the summer of 2007 opposing the McCain/Kennedy/Bush legislation that would have created a “pathway” to citizenship for aliens who entered the US illegally.  Hat tip:  Richard Falknor, Blue Ridge Forum.

Here is Krikorian:

Dick Armey, the putative tribune of the Tea Partiers, has had sense enough up until now to keep his pro-amnesty, open-borders views to himself while helping rally grassroots opposition to the metastasizing state — though he and Grover have been working hard to keep immigration out of the Tea Party agenda (notice that the “Contract from America” doesn’t include anything on immigration or border security among the issues people are supposed to vote for). But Armey can’t help himself; Monday at the National Press Club, his “freewheeling talk” included the following:

In language that will likely be recalled in the upcoming debate over immigration, Armey minced no words in condemning Republicans over their stance.

“Who in the Republican Party was the genius who said now that we have identified the fastest-growing demographic in America, let’s go out and alienate them? This is a nation of immigrants. … There is room in America,” he said.

“When I was Republican leader, I saw to it that Tom Tancredo could not get on a stage because I saw how destructive he was,” Armey said of the anti-immigration former congressman. “Republicans have to get off this goofiness. Ronald Reagan said, ‘Tear down this wall.’ Tom Tancredo said ‘Build that wall.’ Who’s right? America is not a nation that builds walls. America is a nation that opens doors, and we should be that.”

For more from Krikorian, go to National Review Online, here!

I previously mentioned this effort by Armey and Norquist to steer grassroots activists away from immigration here.

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