Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Between 1892 and 1954, approximately 12 million immigrants arrived at the now-iconic Ellis Island to enter the U.S.—or nearly 200,000 legal entries per year.
All were registered, documented, and given rudimentary health exams.
They arrived as rich and poor, white and non-white, and, without exception, legally.
With the gradual decline of such great influxes, Ellis Island finally ceased operating roughly 71 years ago.
Yet Ellis Island’s successful tenure offers a sharp contrast to the failures of our recent open-border catastrophes.
Americans will never know how many immigrants swarmed the southern border between 2021 and 2025, when Joe Biden and his impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas destroyed federal immigration law as we once knew it.
By design, they allowed between 10 and 12 million foreign nationals to make a mockery of federal immigration laws by swarming the southern border.
Many crossers grew violent at any sign of even meek efforts by ICE officers to enforce the law. Border Patrol officers were often mocked, threatened, and assaulted by arriving illegal aliens.
Officers were unsure as to what was worse: the occasional violence from illegal immigrants or retaliation from the Biden administration if they sought to enforce federal law and block illegal entrants.
So the Biden administration pulled off the near impossible. In a mere four years, it had invited in almost as many illegal immigrants as had entered through Ellis Island legally over seven decades.
But unlike past immigrants, we now witness organized violence against ICE officials. We see Orwellian scenes of mobs burning the American flag—the flag of the country they demand to stay in—while waving the flags of the countries they have no desire or intention of returning to.
In sum, three generations ago, a smaller, poorer, but wiser America properly solved its immigration problem at Ellis Island—welcoming in immigrants orderly and legally with health and background screenings.
In contrast, during the Biden years, we, in our arrogance and affluence, engaged in a great experiment—or rather misadventure. Never in our history has the U.S. been home to roughly 53 million foreign-born residents.
Never have immigrants comprised nearly 16 percent of the population.
Never has California had 27 percent of its residents not born in the U.S.
Never have we allowed in up to 10,000 aliens a day, with little concern for whether they carried fentanyl, had criminal records, were sick, were unvaccinated, were traffickers, or belonged to violent gangs.
Worse still, the Biden administration made zero effort to acculturate, integrate, and assimilate this massive influx. In fact, they did the very opposite of Ellis Island’s protocols, which fostered pro-American values, melting-pot integration, and respect for American history and culture. Once upon a time, new arrivals were all expected to become Americans—or why else had they come?
Now, the moment an illegal alien has entered the U.S., he likely senses that his ethnicity or race will be essential to his identity. In the minds of the ruling DEI commissariat, claiming a tribal identity offers an easy pathway to generous housing, food, healthcare, legal, and educational entitlements.
So, under Biden’s immigration non-policy, almost all illegal immigrants were immediately categorized as victims in the Marxist binary ledger that now divides America into the oppressed vs. the oppressors.
If one devised a plan to damage America, he could not have done better than further dividing us by tribal chauvinism, overwhelming our fragile social services so essential to struggling Americans, and fueling the already dangerous neo-Confederate state and local nullifications of federal law and the growth of “sanctuary cities.”
Daily, we witness performance-art mayors and governors boasting of how they “resist” federal law enforcement. These modern rebels pose as if they are our own era’s versions of mini-Confederate states. They now brag of states’ rights as they dare the federal government to protect its own property and enforce federal laws within their parochial jurisdictions.
Why did Biden—or whoever was making policy in his place—destroy the border?
What was his utterly mad intent?
To alter the nation’s demography by importing future Democrat constituents dependent on state largesse?
To bow to the demands of his DEI base?
To mindlessly do the opposite of the prior Trump administration, which had closed the border and returned to legal-only immigration?
Virtue signaling while waving illegal aliens across an open border is easy.
But trying to close the border and return millions who entered unlawfully to their homelands is nearly impossible.
It is surreal that those who claimed moral superiority while systemically destroying federal law now condemn as immoral those striving to restore it.
Ironically, they who fight against ICE and their enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws are the most UNdemocratic. Why? All such laws were passed by democratic votes by democratically-elected Congresspersons. So those who wish to nullify democratically-created laws are the REAL enemies of “our democracy.”
so what are possible answers? why was Biden out to destroy the USA?
What a contrast! Good choice of writing about it. Their mad intent still might pay off if we don’t get the correct mid-term results. With Republicans like Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green doing their best to damage the President , leftist always have their useful idiots they can count on to achieve their dystopian dream.
I have many ancestors who came out o Europe….. Germany, Hungary, Norway, England, Ireland, Scotland…. some came trough Ellis Island, I located my Gandpa’s entry record, about 1886 or so. Most on the English side came well prior to Ellis Island, some even prior to the Pilgrims in 1620. Some were aboard the May lower. One thing I have learned as I’ve studied our history…NOT ONE o them came expecting support, a handout, an easy ride. They ALL brought skills, trades, tools, knowhow, and a good will to work.
All any wanted was to be allowed the opportunity to make their way without being pestered, taxed to death, compelled to do/not do this, that, or the other thing. All brought their “big boy pants” and wore them daily. Many, through their work, brought great prosperity wherever they decided o move to.
My paternal Grandmother was born in the midwest to 1st generation German immigrants. They moved out West, she married another German, had ten children, one dying very young o disease, the others all prospered and grew. I attended her 100th Birthday Party…… 265 at least attended, all but maybe six were her relatives. The newest member o the 5th generation had been born just days prior. I took a 5 generation photograph, direct line descent. She outlived all but three o her adult children.
Agree with Mike Smith, but believe self-enrichment is the driving force for someone to enter politics and with that position comes power & control. As Joe Kennedy once commented, government is good business, meaning access to government contracts & inside information.
In this respect, Nancy Pelosi would be the current poster child for self-enrichment through insider-trading and federal grants. There’s also the matter of the wealthy wanting a family member in government to protect their interests, plus the prestige.
I remember Hollywood putting out utopian films where the world operated in peace in a one world government like it was heaven on earth. I guess that’s the hope that a borderless world will create, but I think Mad Max is more like it.
The damage wreaked upon the US will never be undone…it can only be somewhat mitigated. These actions were pure treason and punishment for those responsible should follow, but of course will not. The actions of the god-awful Biden administration must go down in history as the worst disasters ever. Furthermore, the democrats who were silent the whole nightmare were complicit. And now you want Americans to vote for you? Not just no, but HELL NO!
There was one primary reason Biden and Harris and the donks opened up the border and invited the world to partake of American largesse. They figured that these people would, sooner or later, by hook or by crook, become registered voters. Mainly by getting a driver’s license because ”they had to get to their jobs,” then get registered to vote, by using their drivers’ licenses, and vote Democrat forever, in gratitude. God hope the donks are wrong.
My father, his two surviving siblings, and their parents arrived at Ellis Island in 1954, when my dad was around 15. They had survived Stalin’s USSR, and Hitler’s concentration camps. They had sponsors, they got jobs, my father and his sister went to school (my father worked throughout his high school education). They became U.S. citizens as soon as they could (one of my dad’s favorite moments). They assimilated. My father joined the Army after graduation because soldiers were his heroes because they liberated his family, and to show his appreciation to his adopted country. There are legal immigrants who still do this (are sponsors still a requirement?), but, unfortunately, there are too many illegal immigrants who aren’t.
Leftism/progressivism is a suicide pact for the society that chooses to follow it.
And compare the due process, constitutional protection and free legal representation that these illegal aliens have received, as opposed to the J6 American citizen protestors.
VDH –
I’m with Jim J. Hoffmann. The more I reflect back on Biden and Mayorkas’ ridiculous immigration crimes – the more I feel my blood pressure rising. My parents legally emigrated from Germany in 1958. They filled out and completed reams of forms, found a sponsor, provided proof that they could live without government financial assistance and then they…waited in line. DJT should, in addition to investigating Comey, Brennan and Clapper, go after Mayorkas and make an example out of him.
Keep tellin’ it like it is.
Victor; I’m always grateful for your sagacious advice both in your writings and YouTube channel media venues. Unfortunately, every time I finish reading or watching, it infuriates me to no end! Nothing against you, Jack or Sami, just simply that your common sense analysis just reaffirms my opinion that Biden and his administration have committed traitorous acts that, as always, will go unpunished. I have a couple of left wing ‘NO KING’ friends that no matter how hard I try to engage in an empirical conversation regarding POTUS, the hatred flows so deep within their veins it becomes and exercise in futility. I bare no ill will toward any of these left wing lemmings and ask God daily to please help them see the light. They just ‘Don’t Get It’ and sadly, doubt they ever will. Best wishes to you, your family, your team for the upcoming holidays. God bless the good ole’ US of A. our military and Veterans.
Maternal grandmother was proud of her ancestor coming across on the Mayflower.
Paternal grandmother when 12 came through Ellis Island with her parents and older sister in 1899 from Norway and, naturally, settled into farming in freezing Minnesota.
A close relative came here legally through Nogales in 1965, was checked for diseases, required to prove capability for self support, and even required to perform a simplified intelligence test prior to being allowed in (discern differences between various geometric figures, piece of cake for a math whiz), and required to show a capability for self support. It was a couple decades after that when the national embarrassment, the bellowing Ted Kennedy, worked his lie on President Reagan.
Ted Kennedy’s deal was bad enough, however, no president, that is, not one since 1776, can match Biden’s damage to the citizenship of America. Even more than Obama, Biden cheapened citizenship via his acts of easy virtue.
To make matters stingingly, grotesquely worse, on multiple instances he warned citizens who objected too strongly to some of his transgressions that they better be prepared to deal with F16s. Those threats were burned into many of the thoughtful, never to be forgotten. Nevertheless, it was his crazed supporters who tried to assassinate candidate Trump multiple times in a vain attempt to avoid discovery of their agenda.
The Left told us what they were doing, we didn’t believe them. At least, not very many of us believed them.
They set out to destroy the nation and replace the ethics and moral values that built the best nation the world has ever had. What could possibly make them want to do this? Power. Control over others. The overwhelming desire to have near unlimited access to Other People’s Money.
The parallels to many science fiction stories of a dysfunctional world are remarkable.
So grateful for your knowledge and willingness to boldly speak the truth! The storyline (lies) from these self serving liberals and main stream media partners are destroying the fabric of our beautiful country. I am a product of a legal Ellis Island entry family where my father came to this blessed country in 1919 and who had to learn to speak ENGLISH, work to put food on the table, assimilate into our culture, and support the values our of our Founding Fathers / Constitution / Bill of Rights.
I was born and raised in Southern California and it saddens me to see the destruction.
I’m haven’t verified this, but I once heard someone say that a large chunk of all those who came through Ellis Island later returned to their country of origin. The main reason cited for this phenomenon was that there was no government largess being doled out to these people immediately upon arrival. After failing to achieve a better life many just up-staked and went home.
Yes, what Melanie said – lots of ink on Owell and Ayn Rand in various outlets but we never hear about these two demons and their detailed plan for the destruction of America from within
And yet almost 50% of voters wanted Harris and a continuation of the insane open borders. Now Seattle and NYC will have extremely far left mayors. As Benjamin Franklin said we have a Republic but can we keep it.
Prof. Hanson, Your thoughts are spot on. Both political parties thought that immigration was a source of cheap labor and cheap votes. Now both political parties will have to learn that there is no cheap labor and no cheap votes.
Victor, it would be informative if you could speak about the Cloward and Pivon strategy. It seems to be the plan to import people who will overwhelm the social system.