Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Joe Biden, to the degree he was cognizant, has always reflected the Obama-era utopia dream of a borderless world, and thus millions of poor have illegally entered the United States. On numerous occasions, he offered clear warnings of what he would do if he ever had power over immigration policy.
Do we remember this 2020 Biden boast to let in millions and offer blanket amnesties?
“But I will send to the desk immediately a bill that requires the access to citizenship for 11 million undocumented folks, number one. Number two, in the first 100 days of my administration, no one, no one will be deported at all. From that point on, the only deportations that will take place are commissions of felonies in the United States of America.” In Biden’s world, if no illegal alien is ever to be deported unless a criminal, then there is at last no border.
Earlier Biden had also bragged, “We could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million. The idea that a country of 330 million people cannot absorb people who are in desperate need and who are justifiably fleeing oppression is absolutely bizarre.”
After 2020, we found out what Biden really meant was that a few thousand privileged and rich people in Martha’s Vineyard, Malibu, and Rehoboth, Delaware, certainly could not absorb even a few hundred in “desperate need”—but the millions of poor in inner-city Chicago, in the Rio Grande Valley, and the Central Valley of California most certainly could absorb “another two million” illegal aliens.
Most infamously, in 2019, Biden gave explicit outlines of the very open border that he has now institutionalized: “I would, in fact, make sure that there is, that we immediately surge the border all those people are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation that says if you want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come. (emphasis added).”
Again, Biden assumed that “you should come” applied to downtown New York, South Central LA, or El Paso, but under no circumstances to Kalorama, Kailua, or the empty summer dorm rooms of Stanford or Harvard.
All this braggadocio was unfortunately more than the usual empty Biden blather. As president, one of the first things he did really was to “surge the border” by overturning through fiat some 90 Trump executive orders. Despite countless lawsuits, left-wing congressional stonewalling, and internal agency obstruction, these earlier directives had effectively stopped illegal immigration by the fall of 2020.
Upon taking office, Biden, perhaps for the first and only time, made good on his word as he ranted, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.”
Biden not only did his best to ensure an unfenced border, but after the election, he sold off piles of idle wall materials for pennies on the dollar. Thereby, in childish fashion, he reminded the American people (who will needlessly pay additional millions for a new wall, given Biden’s auction and his hyperinflation since 2020) that he hated Donald Trump more than he liked the American people.
Why did Biden destroy the border, allowing in 500,000 violent felons and gang members, over 1 million already served with deportation orders, ten million more unvetted—initially at a time of a government COVID quarantine? Why did he appoint the now-impeached prevaricator Alejandro Mayorkas, who repeatedly and disingenuously claimed that “the border is secure,” even as Americans watched thousands of illegal aliens, drug smugglers, and cartel coyotes crossing the border with impunity?
Was Biden pledged to bend to La Raza pressures?
Did he owe allegiance to a Hispanic activist elite that demanded that millions of new constituents ignore the border, oblivious to the concern of Hispanic border communities? The latter, unlike their elite DEI megaphones, had to deal firsthand with the resulting massive border crossings that overwhelmed social services, drove down wages, bankrupted their schools, and spiked crime in their communities.
Or was Biden simply a nihilist who enjoyed the chaos and the furor it evoked among his supposed “semi-fascist” and “ultra-MAGA” foes?
Was he a hard-left waxen effigy who had no idea that his policies empowered the cartels and their fentanyl pipeline that killed up to 100,000 Americans a year, more than the dead of the Vietnam, Korean, Afghan, and Iraq wars combined?
Certainly, President Obrador of Mexico loved Biden for greenlighting more than $120 billion in remittances that poured into Mexico and Central America, the vast majority of the money subsidized by the American taxpayers whose generous subsidies to illegal aliens freed up their cash to be sent home.
Was the culprit Biden’s legendary innate incompetence fueled by his growing senility? In that regard, it might be best to remember what Obama himself in 2020 said about his former Vice President Biden’s un-Midas touch: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up,” and his admonition about the non-compos-Biden’s desire to run in 2020, “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t.”
Whatever his reasons, how does the Trump administration now correct the Biden legacy of an erased border, a new cohort of 12 million illegal aliens atop an existing body of 20 million, half a million dangerous illegal alien felons, 600 neo-Confederate sanctuary city jurisdictions, and the destroyed corpus of federal immigration law?
One, the administration must change the entire current illegal alien dialectic.
Massive illegal immigration is not a humanitarian project. It is a deeply immoral one. It undermines the rule of law. It insults legal immigration applicants by punishing their lawfulness and making them follow hundreds of protocols while exempting and thus rewarding the lawbreaking.
It is a cynical ploy by the governments of Mexico and Central America to provide a Turnerian “safety valve” for their dispossessed to head north rather than to protest at home for reform.
It is a money-making scheme costing the U.S. $120 billion in remittances alone. The arrival of millions of impoverished migrants to the United States involves virtual indentured servants who are sent northward by their home countries in the expectation they will send hundreds of dollars a month back southward to help their families, who in turn are long neglected by supposedly caring Latin American governments.
It is a war on the American poor, whose wages are eroded by millions of the undocumented, and whose social services, from health to housing to education, are swamped by non-citizens in dire need of government support.
It is a long-term effort to import and nurture a new constituency of those in need of more entitlements and bigger government. The aim is to flip more red states to blue, as if Georgia, Arizona, and Texas will follow the demographic metamorphoses of California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.
Two, Trump, within a year, can finish the wall. A permanent steel/concrete fence of some 2,000 miles will help staunch the influx. So will an immediate executive order ending catch-and-release and requiring application for refugee status before entering the U.S. legally.
Three, Trump can stop the flow of $120 billion in subsidized U.S.-based remittances to Mexico and Latin America. He can threaten all such cynical recipient nations with tariffs. He can further levy a blanket 20-30 percent tax on all remittances sent to Mexico and Latin America from the United States, regardless of the legal status of the sender. Combined with a wall and new border enforcement, such tariffs and taxes would stop the influx quickly.
Four, either passage of new legislation to overturn or winning court reinterpretation of the supposed “anchor baby” clause of the 14th Amendment could end the entire imbroglio of women and couples entering the US solely to obtain infant citizen status (as well as free health care), in order to anchor legality for an entire family.
Trump can merely say, “We need to follow the humane policies of the sophisticated postmodern European nations, none of whom allow unrestricted and automatic anchor-baby provisions.”
Five, to encourage self-deportation, Trump can seek legislation that would forbid for 20 years any foreign national from receiving a legal visa or green card to enter the United States if, at any time in the past, he had been detained entering the United States illegally.
Six, Trump can begin carefully calibrating deportation iterations, starting first with those whose deportations win widespread public support.
The first to go home should be the half million suspected felons and criminals, both those who were arrested here and those who came with criminal records.
They would be followed by 1.5 million aliens already facing deportation orders but who failed to show up for hearings or ignored their prior deportation orders.
The third cohort would include all those who have had no work record, are able-bodied and are currently on local, state, or federal assistance of any nature.
Trump then could issue immediate deportation orders for additional aliens arriving from countries that support terror or are deemed hostile to the United States. That would entail those with known ties to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, or arriving from Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, and a host of others,
To separate the Biden influx from earlier illegal entrants, Trump could offer not an amnesty or citizenship but a green card to those who have: 1) resided in the US for five years, 2) have not committed a crime, 3) are not on public assistance, and 4) would pay a fine for their prior illegal entry.
After those rounds of deportations, the administration might have sent home 10-12 million with full public support. Only then would the public back the one-time issuances of green cards to some of the remaining 20 million pre-Biden illegal aliens, who are working, crime-free, not on public assistance, and have resided over five years in the United States.
All these measures might halve the number of illegal aliens and stop all future illegal immigration. They would allow Americanized prior illegal aliens to formalize their status with a green card that would not entail amnesty but simply allow those now here legally to work, and in some cases, if they wish, to begin the lengthy legal process of obtaining citizenship.
The time to act is now.
In an odd way, Biden’s influx has finally resulted in the American Hispanic community’s abandonment of their former support for open borders. Why?
The sheer size of the current immigrant wave posed unprecedented costs, social and demographic disruptions, and dangers to the viability of existing social services for citizens.
Worse in some ways are the asymmetrical burdens that elite open-borders activists have placed on the Hispanic middle and poorer classes, whose communities bear the brunt of massive illegal immigration.
But most cynically and importantly, half the new arrivals are not from the Latin American world and thus have smaller, if any, expatriate apologists or activists in the United States. It seems to be one thing for the open borders advocate to demand illegal entry for an uncle in Mexico and quite another to extend that same exemption and costly support to someone from Russia, Syria, or mainland China.
A final note: those who destroyed the border and immigration law with it will be the first to decry the cost and trouble of undoing their damage—on their theory that because it costs much to arrest, detain, and try a criminal suspect, it is, therefore, cheaper and wiser simply to let him continue to commit crimes with impunity.
I have run out of words to describe my absolute anger towards this awful man AND all of the collaborators around him. Their destruction of the culture and soul of the United States will have repercussions for decades to come. Billions will have to be spent to try to correct the damage done and these efforts will never bring the true restitution of the damage wrought upon our country.
If there were ever a case for impeachment based on treasonous acts towards the US, this is that case. And yet, the doddering old fool will slink back to Delaware and live out the rest of his days in relative peace and tranquility…that is until he meets his final Judgement Day.
The awfulness of this presidency must never be forgotten, so it is never repeated.
You are absolutely right Jerry, the cost to the moral fabric of our society will
never be recovered , that genie is out of the bottle !!
Hopefully Joe Biden will be known for the man who completed Barack Obama’s
wish to destroy this country !!
I do not agree with VDH on offering 20 million illegal aliens who have been here for 5 years a green card. Rewarding criminality is not good public policy. Those aliens have taken American jobs and used governmental services including health care and education.
Years ago, I had a business in California. One of my employees had a child with a speech impediment. The L.A. school district is charged with providing speech therapy to children with this type of impediment. The child was refused treatment because the cost of providing bilingual education eliminated any funding for helping my employee’s child. In essence an American citizen was unable to obtain a needed service paid for by other American citizens in favor of the children of illegal aliens. That changed my outlook on this matter forever. To this day, as we are aware, illegal aliens get many governmental benefits to the exclusion of citizens.
The employers who use illegal aliens should be denied deduction for the wages and payments to illegals and E-verify should be mandated subject to penalties for failure to apply it to all prospective hires.
Employers who hire illegal aliens should go to jail AND pay a large fine.
As an employer, I reject the idea that border enforcement is MY problem and that I am subject to being fined for hiring someone whose immigration status I cannot verify. If E-verify works and is not an onerous imposition, I’m happy to comply. But if the federal government cannot do its job and keep illegals out of my pool of employees, I refuse to be held liable for the government’s incompetence and inability to carry out their responsibilities.
I’m afraid Trump/Vance will only deport the so called “worst of the worst” (perhaps ten thousand) and not touch the tens of millions of illegals. Business leaders, religious leaders and all the (mostly fake) charaties in the USA need a constant stream of dirt poor peasants entering the nation.
We MUST keep our voices herd on this matter. Stay in contact with your local officials nd be sure to stay in touch with congressional representatives. They need to know they will be voted OUT.
Whether we like it or not, our birth rate has dropped. Abortions count for more than actual births. My thought is that we need new energized CITIZENS who are not lazy, degenerate, and spoiled. Uncontrolled immigration is out, but allowing good people who took advantage of an opportunity to apply to stay is OK with me. Let’s ream out the criminals first, then deal with the rest.
Or maybe stop telling boys they are women and get back to making babies here.
Dr Hanson has it right. Those five steps could be passed and implemented in one year, maybe two at the most. In the interim the new “border czar” must have unfettered authority and resources to accomplish step one – expel, refer for prosecution, the felons already here to our great detriment. Of ongoing value is to clearly identify, charge, and prosecute if appropriate, those in this administration who promulgated, facilitated, and enabled this invasion we experienced for four years. Publicly identify, isolate, and prohibit them from any form of government, or quasi-government (NGOs, etc) office or sinecure indefinitely. Hang a very loud bell around their necks to help us remember the terrible damage they did to us and our entire nation.
Let’s set aside for a minute the concept of providing the tools and resources necessary so those in ‘oppressed’ countries can improve their conditions and enjoy their home country, and , well, I guess that was it.
We are in an historical inflection point, the stealing of the 2020 election & the insertion of the stooge president Biden was a move by the globalists to stop the re-emergence of American dominance on the world stage.
The clueless and ignorant masses manipulated by the leftist media ran cover for the globalists many of whom got fabulously wealthy under this corrupt and immoral regime. If DJT can turn this ship around and begin to repair the damage that this evil regime has done, it will be an historical turnaround on a par with the American revolution & civil war.
Amen, but he needs our help.
These things must be done, but I think GSR above is right. I fear Trump will cave into the business interests and not deport only the worst of the worst. God help us.
Biden is not just a senile fool, he is an evil man and always has been. An arrogant bragging bully, liar, plagiarist, pedophile; filled with self interest and corrupt to the core. We cannot be rid of him soon enough.
It didn’t help having two of the worst criminals in the country, Obama and Pelosi, behind the senile old man calling the shots.
Bob Meyer, you are spot on. Biden is absolutely evil, and the country and the world are suffering and will suffer for decades for failing to acknowledge this truth. How Biden escaped even being charged with, let alone convicted of, treason can only be attributed to spineless faux patriots in the House and Senate, particularly those in leadership.
What a dreary and deadly four years we have endured, at the hands of evil.
The real nihilism emanated from Obama (who embodies pure hatred) and his circle. Biden was just an obedient, corrupted tool.
Indeed
Thank You VDH.
The damage to our country will last for decades. Victor Hanson has given an outline of what must happen and I am hopeful that we can begin to unravel the damage to our culture and our national well being. This is what happens in puppet regimes with an unsuitable figurehead like Biden. May Biden go down in history as the worst of the worst officials of our time.
What is being overlooked is how the degenerate puppet could be lawfully elected AND how his puppet masters could operate with impunity, even until the recent election. What laws need to he changed, or enforced, and which bureaucracies eliminated ?
This is a query, not a comment: are we doing anything about overstayed VISAs? I’m quoting “Marketplace” from back in the day when I still listened to NPR, and they said it’s a dirty little secret in the business world that they are hiring a great many eduated migrants who simply overstay their vistor VISAs. They particularly mentioned Irish workers in Boston. In the academic world, Dr. Hanson, are there a great many students and professors who have overstayed their academic VISAs? Perhaps you can tell us if the academic world is diligent about enforcing valid VISAs for its foreign students and professors? I certainly did not hear that pro Hammas protestors had their right to be in this country validated. Thank you.
One answer is that it is not in a university’s best interest actively to help enforce immigration policy. Hubris and greed mitigate patriotism and confirmity to the weak immigration law. For example, the full student fees and donations paid from international and “humanitarian ” sources is an apple too ripe not to pick, especially as our young college aspirant population recedes.
Great piece as always Victor. I just pray that the President elect and his team show strong leadership and most of all….a track record of accomplishments to back up all their pre-election rhetoric. It would be a sad day in hell if the American public again will have to deal with a new group of pseudo-intellectual lemmings but this time on the right side of the aisle!! God help us!! Merry Christmas to you, your family and your devoted readers/listeners. God bless America, our military and Veterans.
Thank you, Mr. Hanson, for such clarity and plausible suggestions on how to fix such a complex and expensive issue for all tax-paying citizens of the US.
Those who abetted this in the White House should be prosecuted for treason.
DJT has a fair amount of political capital to spend on this project. He needs to act decisively and spend it. The left will howl and call him all the names you can imagine, he cannot be distracted. Homan was a great choice, you know he is heading for serious confrontations with big city mayors, blue state governors, the entire race baiting industry, he sounds like he is up for the fight but it’s not a fight he can win by himself. He needs the President & the president needs to be willing to spend lots of political capital.
No citizenship ever for illegals, if only to thwart the left’s cynical policy of importing a new leftist voting bloc. If that leaves us with a permanent lower class of green card holders and their offspring, that’s a small price for insulating our voting rights from dilution. It they want to vote they can go home.
Simply enforcing federal employment law(*) would go a long way toward solving the problem. Under federal law, employing illegal aliens is unlawful, something we used to enforce.
Take away the jobs and you take away their reason for coming. During COVID’s shutdowns when there was no work to support them, illegal aliens were leaving en masse voluntarily, deportation not required. Simply enforcing existing law could make that happen again with minimal expense, and minimal trauma.
(If you’ve got ants in your candy, put away the candy.)
(*) (e.g. 8 USC 1324)
It’s called the “Fundamental Transformation of America.”
It was one of the things Barack Obama campaigned on in 2008, but nobody ever asked him what he meant by that. Now he has made it happen and doesn’t have to take the blame.
I can’t post a comment. I tried 15 times.
Why, what happened?
Come on, I typed my comment in 3 times and it didn’t register. Cut and pasted it the 12 other times, and it didn’t registered.
Then I type a few words and it all of a sudden posts, something is wrong.
A member should be able to
Cut and paste a comment, I have done it so many times. Can you fix the problem please.
Hello Mr. Cool, this is from the team at the Blade of Perseus. It looks like your post went in above. Thank you for wishing us a Merry Christmas. So, one post went in. Maybe you were trying to post another time???? I’m not sure. Let us know if you are still having problems in another post. Or go to “Contact Us” under the “Reader” tab in the top navigation bar. You can write jheyne or rjenkins with any problems. Cheers.
Gd bless VDH and keep him in his special care and DJT for all of us . We must keep an attitude of gratitude for men like this .for as mad as we are for what has taken place over the past years, help is on the way!
For a long time, I thought Biden was “only” the second worst president in our history. I was wrong. Biden and the Mad Cackler are the worst “Administration” in history. I’ve asked some Democrats to name one thing that Biden/Harris have done that hasn’t been awful and no one can tell me. All I hear is “Trump is a felon.” This creating the migrant invasion ranks #1 on the list.
Kailua! How nice to see you mention it, Dr. Hanson! I’m surprised you know of it! While it’s true that we have not felt the impact of illegal immigration, your implication it’s because we’re a wealthy community of elites. It may become that more so over the years, but not when we moved in 30 years ago.
I’m
Always appreciative of your well-grounded insights.
Victor, please send your suggestions to DJT and encourage him to enact ALL asap.
Thank you in advance.
In the push for massive deportations is the fact that until the border wall is finished and secure many of those deported will simply come back into the United States. For that reason construction of the border wall should be the highest priority even above deportation.
For the purposes of Federal representation, the census number used should be US citizens, not total bodies. As it is, importing bodies benefits the party of illegal immigration.
I am so happy to have discovered Professor Hanson. When i can’t take the insanity going on around me, or feel crushed by what is happening to my beautiful country, I seek out Professor Hanson’s latest videos and Editorials. He gets me grounded again with his perfectly articulated messages that represent exactly how I feel yet often fail to put into the proper words. He is always so calm and deliberate in his message that he is now my favorite. He just suites me perfectly. God has given us a gift in so many great people, and Professor Hanson is at the top of that list. Merry Christmas to all of you here, and thank you Professor Hanson for all that you to for America. God Bless America and God Bless Professor Hanson.
I am so happy to have discovered Professor Hanson. When i can’t take the insanity going on around me, or feel crushed by what is happening to my beautiful country, I seek out Professor Hanson’s latest videos and Editorials. He gets me grounded again with his perfectly articulated messages that represent exactly how I feel yet often fail to put into the proper words. He is always so calm and deliberate in his message that he is now my favorite. He just suites me perfectly. God has given us a gift in so many great people, and Professor Hanson is at the top of that list. Merry Christmas to all of you here, and thank you Professor Hanson for all that you to for America. God Bless America and God Bless Professor Hanson.
VDH,
In the first part of your essay you correctly state how in four short years Joe Biden and the Neo Socialist Democratic Party have crippled the United States America.
Unfortunately Biden is not through yet, evident by his mass pardons, today he pardoned all death row inmates in the US with three exceptions, citing his Catholic faith as his reason. Who knows what craziness he will come up with before January 20th to undermine the incoming Trump administration.
In the second part of your essay, you lay out point by point the measures needed to return America to greatness at home and aboard. Essential I would call all your points, “common sense in detail.”
Fittingly you delivered one of your most powerful essays the week of Christmas 2024, as the American people begin to see light emerging after four year of darkness in our country.
Merry Christmas Victor, Jack, Sami and to everyone at The Blade of Perseus.