Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
There have been more than 8 million illegal entries into the United States since Joe Biden was elected president. He appointed Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, whose apparent prime directive was to destroy the southern border.
That task is precisely what Mayorkas has now accomplished. The result is that the border is neither “porous” nor “problematic,” but nonexistent, kaput, vanished—and by design.
In one of the most surreal experiences in the history of the United States, each night Americans see video clips of thousands of foreign nationals crossing the border en masse with complete impunity—as if the entire corpus of federal immigration law has been dynamited.
But by whom? And why?
As millions of citizens watch this travesty, they hear only from Mayorkas, Biden, and his Pravda megaphone, Karin Jean-Pierre, that the border is “secure”—a Baghdad Bob narrative that they know that we know is an utter lie.
Surely, this deliberate effort to destroy an entire border, to invite in millions of unchecked illegal aliens, and to violate oaths to execute faithfully the laws of the land are impeachable offenses for both Biden and Mayorkas. If not, what are?
Stranger still, Americans have no real idea why these revolutionaries are destroying our border.
Are they nineteenth-century anarchists who want to undermine the United States itself? Are they cynical “Demography is Destiny” and “The New Democratic Majority” leftists who need new dependent Democrat constituents to find votes for agendas that most Americans reject?
Do they want to create billions of dollars in new entitlements and subsidies to grow government, hike taxes, and make the upper middle class pay, as Biden puts it, “their fair share?”
Whatever the cause of this nihilism, there are at least 10 ways their open border is insidiously destroying the United States.
Legal immigration
Does legal immigration still exist? Are we still requiring those who would enter the U.S. legally to provide required documents, undergo audits, and complete background checks?
Is not the current policy de facto punishing those who follow the law by tying them up in bureaucratic red tape for years as we reward unlawful behavior by greenlighting amnesties for lawbreakers?
Is the Biden administration’s policy designed to deflect those from South Korea with MDs, or from Mumbai with PhDs, or from Taiwan with MBAs, by putting their applications on a slow, second-track pathway? Is DEI at work in the sense that America does not want here the accomplished who earned degrees and possess vital skills, as if they are thereby condemned as “privileged?”
Does Biden realize that his legacy of inviting in “surging” millions, in contradiction of the law, will soon erode all support for immigration, legal or otherwise?
Lawless US
Does the utter lawlessness at the border contribute to the general coarseness and current mockery of the rule of law in general—an epidemic that plagues our cities with homelessness, smash-and-grabs, car-jackings, and random assaults?
Is the rationale that if you can walk freely past border security guards, who cares whether you ignore a summons, throw away a traffic ticket, or skip reporting some income?
Dependency
If the first thing a foreign national does is to violate the law by crossing the border without permission, and the second is to reside illegally in the US, and the third is to apply for some sort of food, housing, medical, legal, or educational subsidy, then is that really the type of new resident we desire?
Apparently, what the United States does not want is the immigration model of old, one in which immigrants applied legally, came here lawfully through authorized ports of entry, and were self-supporting upon arrival.
In other words, it may be hard to shake from Biden’s likely 10 million illegal aliens their initial assumption that, 1) in America, the laws do not apply to them and, 2) their new naïve or guilt-ridden hosts, not themselves, are responsible for their welfare.
Cui Bono?
We suspect the Left and employers welcome illegal immigrants; the more en masse and without audit, the better.
But how do millions simply leave their homes, cross international borders, and get waved on to El Norte? What is the mentality of Mexico that facilitates this mass exodus northward from its neighbors and from itself?
Is Mexico a frenemy?
Do we even care that some $60 billion leaves the U.S. as remittances into Mexico, mostly by illegal residents here who are on state and local subsidies to free up their billions of dollars to support people inside Mexico that Mexico City has no intention of helping?
Is such a gargantuan cash outflow, then, Mexican socialist President Obrador’s cynical idea of payback for supposed historical Yanqui sins? Does he think a new, huge expatriate community will continue to lobby for Mexico to do what it pleases on our side of the border? Does illegal immigration warp U.S. foreign policy itself?
Cartels
Does anyone worry that among the millions moving northward are hundreds of Mexican cartel functionaries loaded with tens of thousands of pounds of dangerous drugs, fentanyl most prominently?
Do we even care that the U.S. is enriching the cartels through its tolerance of drug importation and alien smuggling? With open borders, are we not abetting the annual 100,000 or so deaths of Americans through overdoses, often by the counterfeiting of fentanyl to resemble less toxic illicit drugs and prescription tranquilizers, sedatives, and painkillers?
Is there any other enemy in the world—Russia, China, or Iran—that has helped kill more Americans than the cartels, along with the culpable Mexican government that deflects cartel criminality and violence northward?
Trashing Citizens
Illegal immigration is insidiously diminishing citizenship by equating illegal aliens with, if not making them preferable to, American citizens. Is there anything an illegal alien cannot do in Biden’s America—work in a campaign, vote in some elections, serve in the military, receive government subsidies? Crisscross international borders without a passport?
To put it another way, why did we expel 8,400 US military personnel for the “crime” of passing on the required but experimental mRNA vaccinations (most of the discharged had natural immunity from prior COVID infections), while we let in millions of foreigners without worrying whether any have been vaccinated for anything, much less have had COVID tests?
Why are we forcing every American to recalibrate, at great expense, their identification to a “Real ID” to ensure security within our airline industry while putting tens of thousands of illegal aliens, without any documents, on flights throughout the country?
Does the Biden administration policy translate into something like, ‘We know and therefore don’t trust Americans, so we must apply airline boarding standards to them that we certainly do not need with more reliable and trustworthy illegal and unaudited aliens?’
Why, in bankrupt cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, where social services are overwhelmed with thousands of needy citizens, are we imploding such facilities with influxes of illegal aliens?
Do we prefer the latter to the former? Does the Biden administration’s message again read something like, ‘We care more about the health status of those south of the border than our own citizen poor in our own inner cities, so please surge on up?’
Who Pays?
At $34 trillion in debt, and with budget deficits normalizing at near $2 trillion a year, where does America find the hundreds of billions, if not eventually trillions of dollars, to welcome in millions of the unaudited—all in need of immediate no-questions-asked entitlements, and for some years on end?
Is California the model, where currently an estimated half of all illegal aliens reside and 27 percent of the resident population was not born in the U.S.?
California, while experiencing hundreds of thousands of new illegal entries and a $70 billion annual budget deficit, just extended free health care services to non-citizens who entered unlawfully. More than half of the state’s births are already paid for through Med-Cal. One-third of Americans living on assistance live in California. A fifth of the population struggles below the poverty line while the state runs up a $70 billion annual deficit with the nation’s highest income taxes and gas taxes and among the highest sales taxes.
No wonder over a quarter-million upper-middle-class taxpayers flee the state each year, unable to endure a 13.3% non-deductible, top state income tax rate on top of the 37% of their income that goes to the IRS.
No wonder there is a catastrophic current 25% drop in California income tax revenues when a single 1% of households pays 50% of all state income taxes—and is stampeding out of state. Is Governor Newsom federalizing California, or spreading the idea that far too privileged Americans owe the poor of the world massive subsidies as a reward for breaking their laws in coming here?
Ending Deterrence?
There are many reasons why foreign thugs are testing the United States—Putin in Ukraine, the Chinese with a spy balloon over our native soil, Hamas by murdering Israelis, Iran’s satellites by rocketing our military installations and ships abroad.
No doubt our woke, manpower-short military that fled from Kabul, leaving a multibillion-dollar trove of weapons, has lost the ability to deter opportunistic belligerents.
The Biden administration’s obsequious courting of Iran, contextualizing Chinese aggression, and announcing our reaction to a Russian invasion of Ukraine would hinge on whether it was “minor” have all eroded deterrence. Now, in circular fashion, President Obrador no longer fears any reaction to millions from his country swarming into the United States, as he had in the past when Trump pressured him to control his side of the border. That he helped to blow up the border with impunity also, in turn, reminds aggressors abroad that a nation too afraid to protect its own sovereignty can hardly defend that of its allies.
The DEI Narrative
We, the hosts, no longer believe in the melting pot. Instead, cultural Marxists divide America into the automatically victimized, by nature of their nonwhite status, versus the victimizers defined by whatever “white” is conveniently classified at the moment.
Class, history, and individual merit matter not so much in this 24/7 effort to reduce everyone to either oppressed or oppressor.
Under this racist binary, 99 percent of illegal aliens—who will be instantly categorized as the so-called nonwhite—will enter the U.S. with innate claims against the majority. Thus, they will become instantly eligible for everything from affirmative action preferences in hiring and admissions (the Supreme Court ruling will be a minor inconvenience for the Left, in the manner of the easily ignored California Prop 209) to race-based targeted equity programs and subsidies.
And the message we send to the illegal immigrant? Certainly not unity, integration, and assimilation. Instead, we emphasize ethnic, racial, religious, and linguistic differences and fuel such divides. Such separatism pays cultural, social, and economic dividends in such a way that assimilation and integration earn rebuke, if not ridicule.
Cruel Irony?
The woke Left defines America as incurably racist. So how could the nonwhite in the millions possibly flee their home countries, where they compose a majority of the population, only to seek out the one country in the world where they are told toxic “white privilege” is unsurpassed?
Did the millions swarming the Rio Grande not listen to the horror stories of Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib? Do they not read the warnings of systemic this and that from Professor Kendi? Have they been briefed on endemic something by Ta-Nehisi Coates? Are they unaware of the messaging from BLM and Antifa? Were they not warned by President Obrador of the Inferno waiting ahead to the north?
None of the millions apparently wished to be diverted to a quite diverse India, or China, a land of mandated equity, or the inclusionary lands of the homogenously Islamic Middle East.
If the amorality of illegal immigration were not so deleterious to Americans, its absurdity would be laughable.
It’s all leftist payback — for Manifest Destiny, for colonialism, for assimilation and English-only… and in California for having voted for state props. 13, 187, 209 and 227 (property tax, illegals, affirmative action, bilingualism).
Back in ’94, state Latino politicians and activists proclaimed that one day “Anglos” would have to “do some assimilating themselves,” and that their voting habits according to Art Torres were, “The last gasp of white America” in California. Mario Obledo, founder of MALDEF said at the time, “We’re going to take over all the political institutions of California. In five years the Hispanics are going to be the majority population of this state…They ought to go back to Europe.”
I attended a California State University and recall that during the Simpson-Mazzolli debates, 1985-86, one class guest speaker advocated flooding the US with Mexicans and Central Americans to “restore original North American DNA — much as we would by reintroducing a species into a restored habitat to overwhelm in this case invasive white DNA…”
Democrats are impressive. They deliver on their promises, claim there is no Great Replacement underway, and manage to get not a few Republican leaders to go along with them, while Biden in October 23, uses the 1990s Latino activist words to their faces, “I think that this is the last gasp or maybe the first big gasp of the MAGA Republicans.” And he lets Venezuelans invade Texas to turn it blue.
All of this is part of the New World Order as spearheaded by the World Economic Forum led by Klaus Schwab. Marxism is at the core.
At 1:00 AM Sunday January 1, 2024, Eastern Airlines flight 3511 touched down at RFD Airport from San Antonio Tx with 350 undocumented passengers who then boarded eight unmarked bus coaches and were driven off the airport grounds to destinations unknown. All aided and abetted by the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department Deputies against written Federal law. When I wrote the Sheriff’s office I was told to mind my own business by receiving a “thumbs up” in response despite asking for an explanation. Private sector citizens have been reduced to complaining children status getting patted on the head by government officials who ignore our concerns. Yet all the government employees are being paid more than the private sector employees, retiring on average 15 years sooner at an annual cash inflow that is 4x that of a Social Security retirement plan pays and many government workers also receive Social Security on top of their pensions. How can individuals who create zero profits be paid significantly more than those who do produce taxed profits? There is seemingly no way this massive surge can be stopped and even if it were to be stopped what then? How can this country continue to survive financially when millions of early retirees and millions of non-working people are receiving benefits continuously grows? Think about this Professor Hanson, it is possible at any given moment in time for up to four government individuals being paid for the same job yet only one is working.
This is the end of America. The left has succeeded in destroying the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Our only hope is to elect President Trump! Do everything you can. Sitting this one out is not an option.
Everything you said is true. All the information readily clear to the least intellectually curious. Thus many supposed American leaders are aware but do nothing. Clearly many more people hate our country or are so drunk on it milk and honey that they’re delirious and are heading for the cliff ignoring every sign.
Not a day but a four-year presidency that will live in infamy.
1. Destroy the United States of America’s border, social coherance, economy, history, and politics.
2. Tell the people that they should be alarmed by a Republican threat which if elected, destroy America and at the very least, be too uncouthed to be voted for as president.
3. Win the 2024 presidential election and remove the last vestiages of Constitutional freedoms.
4. Come down hard on dissenters and use any violation to put the whole country on lockdown and establish overt totalitarianism.
Peter,
Maddeningly true.
Even more maddening, if possible, was the news video today of James O’Keefe at work in Phoenix. His video of a former school rented by contractors of the federal gov and used to each hour bus loads of illegals to the airport for flights to unknown destinations. Each hour of the day and night.
All paid for by the federal gov. O’Keefe asked on illegal whether he would vote in the upcoming election. ‘Yes’, he replied. When asked whom he would vote for, Biden or Trump, the illegal alien responded, ‘Biden because he gave me the opportunity to be here.’
Even crazier were the 8-Republicans who voted to NOT impeach Mayorkas today.
Thank you that was a great article. I’ve read your book “The dying citizen “. Think I’ll read it again. I’m not a racist, but we recently had two Mexican families move into our neighborhood. The first are legal immigrants. They brought their home and immediately started improving it. After just two years it’s one of the prettiest houses on the block. The second family are illegal immigrants. They’ve lived next to me for two months, have nine vehicles two large trucks. They park in the yard so when it rains the wheels have made large ruts. The legal immigrants are assimilating, but not the illegal. It breaks my heart.
Thanks again.
What about all the privately owned guns folks? I’m 70, I’ll fight for my country as millions of others. Government agency’s may have a lot of bullets, but they can’t win against a country of most excellent citizens. Plus, many of illegals left dictatorships. They will help us out. My bet, they really know how to fight for freedom 🇺🇸
There are so many “hatefully ignorant” DemonicRats. Even in my own family, there a couple Liberals that ignore the Border Catastrophe and try to push back with TDS Bullshit. They are mostly the family members that are Lazy and Bitter, they didn’t achieve much in their life. They’ve been on public assistance on and off for years. At the same time, when they inherited money, they hid it by sending money to children outside California, so they wouldn’t lose welfare and housing assistance eligibility. From what they tell me, there are many, many healthy capable of working folks, that choose to be living off the public trough. The Welfare System encourages this Criminal Behavior. The latest ignorant nonsense they spout, trying to not take any responsibility for their ignorant vote for Biden, ” they are now Independent not DemonicRat” More Donkey Dung, they hate America, revel in seeing it get Raped by CCP CLOWN Biden and his henchmen.
The only reasonable solution to all this IF a republican gets back in office is to deport them. All of them. Yet I can see it now – all the bleeding heart reporters interviewing people “he just wanted a better life. A chance to advance. It’s not his fault that he was born in Venezuela”
Will republicans have the guts to stand up to this kind of “pressure” My gut reaction is NO, they will not.
We must withhold the largess that the illegal immigrants seek. Then most will self-deport. Then a constitutionally adherent federal government can better scrutinize those remaining.
Electronic work ID cards could help achieve this.
What will it take to WAKE UP the sleeping masses who just don’t seem to care about our borders? As John Stuart Mill said, in an address at the University of St. Andrews in 1867: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
It’s time to WAKE UP, AMERICA!!
Unless tens of millions are deported, the US is kaput. “North Latin America “.
Dr. Hanson, as always, a brilliant analysis. I must ask, however, how can these arguments be presented to those who currently support the policies of this administration? If replies from some of your Angry Readers are any indication of that prevailing mindset, would exposure to infallible logic
even matter? I hope it would sway some minds, but must confess, I am skeptical.
There is nothing new or surprising in this narrative, but it is a brilliant succinct summary of the destruction of our country. I have only a tiny shred of hope that this will turn around. Why am I basically pessimistic?
I know too many people who don’t read or watch any news. They may get a few social media feeds or get headlines that pop up on their iPad. They are willfully ignorant. Not stupid, just totally complacent. They are young and old and everything in between.
Because they are uninformed, they will not discuss any of the issues VDH mentions. Their knowledge is so limited they avoid meaningful discussion, debate or dialogue. Shallow platitudes are the norm.
I blame each one of us for letting this happen.
Victor, Not long ago this article’s ending would have been, April Fools. I think that sums up how far we have fallen.
When you get sick you don’t blame the virus that is infecting you. You blame your own weak immune system.
Whites have become too weak to defend their demographic majority, thus they will be replaced.
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”
If Whites are not willing to shoot and kill illegals, they have only themselves to blame for being replaced.
To be clear: I am not advocating for any violence. I am advocating for Whites to peacefully accept their replacement. Maybe vote harder in the next election. I’m sure that will solve all problems.
What choices will they have?
California’s boys are the ones most likely to die from suicide and opioids. Males are the ones least likely to read at grade level and go to college. Yet, the state is paying for the healthcare of non-citizens.
I’m a California Boy-5th generation, with a masters degree in engineering, considered a world class engineer, fluent in three languages, I have no interest in suicide nor opioids nor any other toxic/addictive drug. The state has never paid for any of my healthcare nor did I expect that they should, I did graduate from a state university and am very grateful for that opportunity.
Why am I most likely to die from suicide or opioids?
I like and respect Mr Hanson, but it is well past time people people with a voice like him begin to go past well thought out summaries of the issues and start to collaborate with other like minds to develop recommended solutions to problem like the illegal invasion of our country. We potentially need petition drives to remove officials who do nothing and massive class action suits for those citizens damaged by Biden’s illegality. Are their no well funded organizations and law firms to represent the American people?
I suggest that the border states of the USA should apprehend all illegal immigrants in order to protect their citizens. The apprehended people should then be exported to our adversaries to include those calling for our demise, such as Iran, Communist China, Russia, North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan & Afghanistan using the MSTS system, either by air or by sea. This should arrest the illegal flow of “migrants” to the USA.