Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.
The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.
But how and why did the Biden administration destroy immigration law as we knew it?
The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020.
Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.
The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected.
Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased.
Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down.
New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals.
No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of immigration law.
However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their illegal immigrants northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.
The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted illegal immigration into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others.
New York mayor Eric Adams went from celebrating a few dozen illegal immigrants bused into Manhattan, to blasting his own party by allowing tens of thousands to swamp his now bankrupt city.
But why did the Biden administration deliberately unleash the largest influx across the southern border in U.S. history?
The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.
They feared that the more legal Latino immigrants assimilated and integrated into American society, the less happy they became with leftwing radical abortion, racial, transgender, crime, and green fixations.
Democratic grandees had always bragged that illegal immigration would create what they called “The New Democratic Majority” in “Demography is Destiny” fashion. Now they slander critics as “racists” who object to leftwing efforts to use illegal immigration to turn southwestern red states blue.
Mexico now cannot survive as a modern state without some $60 billion in annual remittances sent by its expatriates in America. But many illegal immigrants rely on American state and federal entitlements to free up cash to send home.
Mexico also encourages its own abject poor and often indigenous people from southern Mexico to head north as a safety-valve of sorts. The government sees these mass exoduses northward as preferable to the oppressed marching on Mexico City to address grievances of poverty and racism.
The criminal cartels now de facto run Mexico. An open border allows them to ship fentanyl northward, earn billions in profits—and kill nearly 100,000 Americans a year. Illegal immigrants pay cartels additional billions to facilitate their border crossings.
Do not forget American corporate employers. Record labor nonparticipation followed the Covid lockdown. In reaction to the dearth of American workers, the hospitality, meat packing, social service, health-care, and farming industries were desperate to hire new—and far cheaper—labor.
Human rights activists insist that the borders themselves are nineteenth-century relics. And the global poor and oppressed thus have a human right to enter the affluent West by any means necessary.
Many in the tony suburbs and in universities do not live anywhere near the border. So they pontificate on the assurance that thousands of unaudited illegal immigrants will never enter their own enclaves or campuses.
The result is elite bottled piety—but not firsthand experience with the natural consequences of millions chaotically fleeing one of the poorest countries in the world to pour into the wealthiest. Without background checks, vaccinations and health audits, legality, high-school diplomas, English-facility, skill sets, or capital, the result is an abject catastrophe.
Polls continue to show that the American people support measured, diverse, legal, and meritocratic immigration as much as they oppose mass illegal immigration into their country and the subsequent loss of American sovereignty on the border.
They understand what the Biden administration does not: no nation is history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.
Ending illegal immigration now depends solely on the American people overriding the corrupt special interests and leaders who profit from the current chaos and human misery.
Wonderful article. It’s also maddening what has happened to our country. One of the main questions I have is why hasn’t Mayorkas been impeached yet?
Astute Dr. Hanson, but pounded publicly for years with no positive results.
Democrat propaganda seems to out shine all republican efforts to the contrary, even with control of the House, i.e. control of the purse.
It appears too many legislators care more about their political futures than the country’s welfare.
When will suppressed anger boil over into action that’s not violent?
Clearly a case of Munchausen Symdrome by Proxy – make the nation sick, then save it. I see evidence for this in dissolved families, drug use, gambling, sexual irresponsibility, and disrespect for the rule of law. In all but the latter, the government takes it upon itself to rectify libertine impulses after it has condoned the behavior. VDH could do a far better job stretching this analogy out, but you get the idea.
Why can’t our Congress, Senate, Judicial and Executive Branch uphold the Constitution? They talk, talk, talk, but all seem incapable of actually solving anything. Time to vote everyone out. We need a government that works for the people. They treat our laws and lives as an afterthought. They use our tax dollars like an unending ATM. The people behind the scenes and the media are the real threat and also need to be exposed, and dismantled.
We need a fresh start with Patriots and personnel that love this country and want to improve it. If not then we won’t be around long.
I can not help but be curious as to why those crossing the Rio Grande are not wearing life jackets. Their crossing now is unchallenged and highly organized, so why no life jackets to make it safer?
Also, have the courts been so neutered that they, when petitioned, can not issue injunctions preventing the Biden Administration from dismantling the border protections that Trump put in place?
I suspect that all these migrants will never leave and one day their status will be legalized as green card holding immigrants. I don’t know if Mr Davis is correct or not in his opinion that the Democrats did this to swell the ranks of Democratic voters, but if that is the case, perhaps a counter measure would be that anyone who entered the US illegally and is eventually granted legal residence be forever precluded from ever becoming a citizen. It’s not that terrible. Many people have lived legally in the US for decades without ever becoming citizens. Of course, the Democrats will then agitate, as they are doing now, to grant non citizens the right to vote.
The invasion is a catastrophe if you want to preserve our way of life, our standard of living, a cohesive intact society. If you’re a Democrat and your goal is the destruction of Western Civilization the invasion is not a catastrophe, it’s the culmination of your life’s work.
Thank you Ted Kennedy and LBJ for the 1965 immigration act. It took 58 years but they are in sight of their ultimate goal. A divided popultion at war internally with each other, unable to stop the Dems from implementing rigged elections and dictatorship.
As Jeff Kiuhner says many times to great callers to his morning show, “I love you. In a NON sexual way”😎😎😂
Just finished “Dying Citizen” what more can be said?
Victor Davis Hanson 70 and Thomas Sowell 93 are proof positive that mental decline late in life is not inevitable. Unfortunately, Biden has become the poster child for defaming the elderly.
Well, the American people will also have to override Zuckerbucks-funded electoral distortions.
I guess, Victor, you were “required” to omit the fact that these illegal residents will be registered and will vote, because there is zero reason the lawlessness of all large cities doesn’t extend to county voting (Democrat) officials. They know they can do as they please and No One will dare say – much less do – anything about it. This is above and beyond the manufacturing of absentee ballots. It is the “manufacturing of citizens”. It means no Republican is ever again likely to wind the presidency (sic).
The driver of Democratic Party immigration madness is the Immigration Industrial complex – the hundreds of thousands of consultants, non-profit employees, and illegals in the US whose livelihood depends on a steady flow of illegals, and a steady flow of money from the Fed Gov to support the placement of illegals. These people drive the open-borders insanity.
I believe we’re being allowed to see the later stages of their “16-yr plan to destroy America” that was somewhat derailed for 4 years when “they never thought she would lose”, and she did. This “great replacement” invasion was always part of the deep state’s plan, but has been accelerated to make up for lost time. And in the process made more visible to the public and arousing the ire of even “sanctuary city” residents as they watch swarms of illegals pour in, take over public spaces and schools, getting gov’t handouts, threatening our safety and very lives. The planners had to know inciting those residents’ fury over such blatant violations was an expected outcome, so the question remains how the deep state will use it to their advantage. Every day it looks like we are falling deeper into clown world, and I have to read headlines twice to double check that they are not Babylon Bee articles. We’ve gone so far past ridiculous I often wonder if all this is being allowed to occur simultaneously to show the people what our future would be if we let it happen, and to light a fire under our collective asses to stand up and take our country back. As so many have been lulled into complacency for so long perhaps allowing clown world to emerge was the only way to go.
The question, however, is how. The interests you describe are powerful and hold sway over far too many leaders in, yes, the Republican Party. Even when we hold the House and Senate, as we have in past, and the Presidency we fail to do what is needed to stem this tide. President Trump’s border wall, while important, faced years of stonewalling and never was completed. The $5B was treated like a massive expense, while we spent far more elsewhere without blinking. The administrative state stymied the effort, and our GOP leaders failed to stop them. Without a real “red wave” of true immigration reformers I fear this will go on and on until the cost of this unmetered migration sinks us. We already have a decaying culture and $33T in debt. We have to start acting in our self-interest.
As usual, superb commentary from Professor Hanson concerning the unchecked Third World invasion and its willing facilitators.
VDH, historian, is correct again. In my opinion there can no longer be any doubt that Joe Biden and his accomplices are indeed guilty of treason. The only question is what do we do now?
Hi VDH.
Love the podcast and the calm wisdom, only wish that it could turn deaf ears.
I’ve written a few times to your university email and here, hoping that you might see and answer my question:
If you believe the last thing a civilization that’s about to be obliterated does is hold onto an unrealistic hope that someone or something will come to save them, do you think that all of us good folk (maybe 70 percent of this nation) will fall prey to the idea that the only thing we can do to save this country is HOPE for a fair and unflawed 2024 presidential election?
Can good people, being good people, find a lawful way to rise up? And isn’t the obligation to defend the Constitution, lawful?
WHO IS DRIVING THE “HOMELESS” PROBLEM?
Local politicians are working with real estate interests to drive down the economy with increased crime to push people out of Prop 13 cap tax protected homes.
Commercial properties tank and predators buy on the cheap. Then they clean up the streets. Properties, taxes go back up and they flip them. Not about druggies or vagrants. The crime and filth are intended cattle prods. The more cities provide housing and services to the “homeless”, the more cattle prods show up.
All twhat said: what can the American people do to stop their leaders from allowing this migration? Voting don’t get it. Elections are bought by liberal elite, financial ruin is a given with Federal debt and Fed Reserve management, proxy war Ukraine sucking us dry, civil war is a blue vs red reality, pick your poison. Boy Scout slogan: Be Prepared. Dig a hole and get in it. BOHIICA
As usual, Mr. Hanson is fully on the mark with his analysis.
The current illegal immigration crisis began in the early 1990s after 1986’s Simpson-Mazzolli Act instantly failed. California overwhelmingly passed Prop 187 in 1994, a message so loud and clear that the Feds should have responded. Instead, things have gone from bad to nightmare. Secretary Mayorkas admitted in May that illegal aliens’ purpose was to create racial “equity” i.e. a non-majority balance of blacks, Hispanics and whites… After 30 years I am no longer hopeful about this country. As for putting our faith in assimilated immigrants, think again; the Santa Ana CA city council is now debating giving illegals local voting rights and the Latino and Vietnamese members are all for it… Citizens are just going to have to get nasty and in people’s faces. Tell illegals they were brought here to lower wages and dilute your vote, that their very presence makes them your natural enemy. Remind your liberal green friends how they stupidly ignore the science about population growth and habitat loss; tell your priest or pastor they’ll get no donations if they continue support of illegals. And if the cops are on the illegal’s side, politely call them traitors… I never thought I would quote the detestable Gore Vidal about anything, but he knew the score: “The American government always acts in bad faith toward everyone, particularly its own people. Once you go in knowing that — nothing surprises you.”
Agreed, but how? How do we “override the corrupt special interests and leaders who profit from the current chaos and human misery.”
Our votes are useless, they get overridden regardless of how many vote. If we protest, no matter how peacefully, we get thrown in jail. How do we override the corrupt special interests and leaders who profit from the current chaos and human misery? Answer that and win a prize.
The dearth of American workers was also due to so many employees, especially now impacting our healthcare industry, who refused to get the COVID mRNA shot. The media keeps acting like we had a sudden loss of healthcare workers that fell off a cliff somewhere; God forbid they remind people that thousands of healthcare workers made informed decisions on their own health and decided they’d rather lose their jobs than be guinea pigs for a non-vaccine. And the hundreds of thousands coming over the border now will gladly get jabbed with anything AND vote Democrat just to get a seat at the American table.
I wish every American could read this.
BIDEN IS CRAP
First come the innovators, who see opportunities that others don’t. Then come the imitators, who copy what the innovators have done. And then come the idiots, whose avarice undoes the very innovations they are trying to use to get rich.
The problem, in other words, isn’t with innovation — it’s with the idiocy that follows. So how do we as individuals (not to mention as companies and societies) continue to embrace the value-creating upside of creativity while guarding against the value-destroying downsides of imitation? The answer, it seems to me, is about values–about always being able to distinguish between that which is smart and that which is expedient. And that takes discipline. – Warren Buffet
Wisdom of Warren Buffett: On Innovators, Imitators, and Idiots by Bill Taylor October 09, 2008
Typo+in+second+to+last+paragraph.++%22no+nation+IN+history%22
Thanks
Great article! Some news outlets are reporting immigration issues in Europe and the UK but only a few in the US are actively reporting on the border. I read that Italy and Europe are experiencing immigrants from African countries at the same time and Russia is making headway in Africa. Gangland style groups are taking money from China and Russia to take over governments in Central/South America and Africa. I wonder if this is the grand plan of the Chinese Communist Party to create disarray in democratized governments so as to gain an advantage in global influence.
This is not solely an issue of the left or right. Congress as a whole is responsible for not taking action to clarify and solidify laws to manage immigration. Too much ambiguity such that the Executive branch via State and DOJ can wax and wane on law and policy as they desire. Yes, the Trump Administration took corrective action with some measurable improvement in control, but without Congressional action it disintegrated. Having recently experienced sponsoring and supporting our son in laws “LEGAL” immigration I can assure you that the process was, is, and remains broken. I am curious as to how previous mass migration was handled e.g. the Irish, the Italians, etc. was there even any laws governing those movements or even the consideration that they might be illegal? Where there limits? How were they processed and provided for?
Biden appointed Kamala Harris as the “Border Czar”. We know how she fixed that problem. Now she is the head of the gun control committee. We should expect similar results. As always the Dems reward incompetence.
They truly have no one to lead this country.
Yet, Senate Minority Leader McConnell and the none of the GOP Senate leadership have made this an issue. They have become open border democrats. They fund billions each CR to pay for apps to violate our borders, so called Charities that make millions of dumping border violators in our cities, and they pretend its all for farmers to have someone pick their field for $10/hr while the taxpayer picks up the tab for housing, Obamacare, and SNAP. The GOP leadership has become silent in the face of an invasion. They care more Ukraine than our country.
If one believes that only 7 or 8 millions have entered the country i have a bridge for sale cheap.