Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Why would any president destroy the U.S. southern border?
The Left typically “pounces” on anyone daring to suggest that the Biden administration had green-lighted illegal immigration to gain new constituents for agendas that otherwise were without broad public support.
The Left smears critics of open borders as racist conspiracists spreading the “Great Replacement Theory.”
Yet for years, Democrats and leftists themselves had written triumphalist books with titles like “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” And often they crowed that “Demography is Destiny.”
A few left-wing globalists even boasted of a new borderless world, in which anyone could live anywhere he wished.
Not too long ago, Texas State Representative Gene Wu (D-Houston), chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, jumped the shark to say out loud what is usually left unsaid about the Democrat agenda:
The same unapologetic left-wing weaponization of illegal immigration is occurring in Europe. Sheer numbers there have already radically changed the demography—and political constituencies—of the continent.
Recently, the former Spanish “Minister of Equality,” an energized Irene Montero, offered an unambiguous rant: “I hope for ‘replacement theory.’ I hope we can sweep this country of fascists and racists with immigrants. Whatever their skin color, whether ‘Chinese, Black, or Brown.’”
The culmination of the new hubris in the U.S. was the Biden administration’s destruction of the southern border and enforcement of federal immigration law.
On some days, the Biden influx exceeded anyone’s wildest imagination, at a rate of 10,000 illegal entrants per day. The Homeland “Security” Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in Baghdad Bob style, occasionally pontificated that the border was “secure”—as thousands in the background illegally swarmed the border, without health or even rudimentary background checks.
The Left’s political agenda for illegal immigration was to be realized either immediately through compromised ballot integrity or soon enough by warping the census-based reapportionment of congressional districts.
No wonder there is now near-hysterical Democratic opposition to even basic national requirements of a photo ID to vote. Yet, traditionally liberal polls like Gallup and Pew show that 83 to 84 percent of Americans support mandatory presentation of a voter photo ID.
Usually, the Left fawns over European protocols. But it now grows quiet when reminded that 46 of 47 European nations, even those governed by the Left, require IDs to vote.
Apparently, Democrats assumed that once 10 million more of the world’s poorest had illegally crossed the southern border, without audit or English proficiency, they would filter throughout American society and become impossible to repatriate.
Soon, open borders would flip more states blue, as well as increase their congressional seats. Illegals were to be redefined as mere “residents” and often recipients of mail-in ballots.
The reality that millions of new poor through their needs would grow the welfare state, expand government at all levels, require far more taxes, and fuel the DEI binary of oppressed/oppressors were added benefits.
The nexus between the nine-billion-dollar Somali welfare fraud and Minnesota Democratic officials offers a sharp reminder of how the immigration/welfare/DEI exemption industry was created and protected by authorities.
Biden’s new 10 million unlawful entrants may have increased the existing pool of illegal aliens (20 million?) to 30 million.
That total, in turn, radically grew the existing group of 20 million legal foreign-born citizens and legal residents of various categories.
So when Trump took office in January 2025, the U.S. had admitted a record high of foreign-born residents. They now made up some 16 percent of the population and perhaps 53 million in actual numbers.
The influxes came at a time when too often the melting-pot tradition of integration, assimilation, and acculturation was reviled and superseded by salad-bowl ethnic chauvinism and separatism.
Yet the triumphant Left never imagined a Trump reelection.
Nor could it grasp fully Trump’s counterrevolutionary effort to secure the border and undo the Biden nihilism.
Even more surreal to Democrats were his efforts to reinstate the integrity and supremacy of federal immigration law.
No one really believed Trump would seek to find and deport millions who had filtered through fifty states. Most were enjoying de facto immunity via hundreds of left-wing lower district court judges and blue-state officials of the Tim Walz/Gavin Newsom sort.
There is only one way that the left would ever oppose a return to legal, measured, and diverse immigration. Namely, if any of its immigrant constituencies in the future—such as the 55 percent of Hispanic males who voted for Trump in 2024—dared to vote on criteria other than federal entitlements, ethnic solidarity, and Democratic coercion.
Do that, and the Left would close the border quickly.
Great to see VDH back!
Unbelievably well put
Having achieved hostile takeovers of academia, media, courts, big cities, big suburbs, and 1.2 (that is, D + 0.2 R) political parties, the left needs to cinch the deal for the long run by importing hostile aliens to outnumber and terrorize. patriots. They are to responsible self-government what Mamdani is to snow removal.
Dear VDH,
I am so deliriously happy that you’re getting better and back-in-the-saddle, so to speak :-).
Your’s is always the one opinion I await most eagerly for in important matters and it means so much to me.
My only comment is for some of those impatient with the President’s progress in prosecuting those who’ve committed bad deeds and need punishment. I urge everyone to be patient. President has barely been back in office for a year! It takes a good three months for department heads to get acclimated. They can certainly round ’em up and throw them in the clinker but hastiness will not end with good and satisfying results. There must be solid, well investigated cases with zero holes.
Our patience will be rewarded but there may be instances of disappointment and we have to accept some. President Trump and his entire cabinet are amazing. Stay the course everyone.
Blessing to our very special Victor Davis Hanson, and God’s blessings to our President Donald J. Trump!
“Yet the triumphant Left never imagined a Trump reelection.”
That’s because the strategists and thinkers on the Left (if there are such people) failed to read your book, Victor. I did, when Trump ran the first time, because I was looking to be able to defend my choice. See, when Trump had first talked about running for President, I thought it was just a publicity stunt to support his brand. “The Case for Trump” really explained his platform and what globalism had done to us, so that his popularity and political success became clear. And the image of the lone gunman outsi”der is so apt.
Other books they failed to read were Conrad Black’s “A President Like No Other”, and JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy.” If you want to understand how Americans who work for a living think, and vote, those books are all excellent.
But our Left, the progressives, are so arrogant, that I think they don’t think they have anything to learn.
Even Mexico has a national photo Voter ID card. Embarassed to say that their election procedures are cleaner than ours.
If Trump doesn’t get some high level arrests, I’ve given up on trials, the MAGA coalition will crumble. He promised accountability and has NOT delivered it. We are sick to death of lying, corruption and perversion. It will stop or our republic will die. Full stop.
Imagine if Trump announced that the GOP was going to spend a lot of government money to recruit 20 million conservative voters to come to the USA from all around the world and locate them in states where they would provide the GOP with electoral victories.
Simply stating the question and imagining the obvious Democrat response is all one needs to do to win this argument on illegal immigration.
Agree with Jim Hoffmann. Everyone needs to VOTE in midterms. Enough has been said to know what’s been going on.
Thankful for your recovery and return. You continue to be a shining light of rational enlightenment. As a 72-year-old fifth-generation northern Californian and survivor of the Cal State system myself, I find your perspectives on those issues to be especially lucid and insightful. I suspect we likely passed each other on Hwy 99 a time or two. Thank you for the breath of sanity!
The democrats are part of the Globalist one world government that wants tyrannical control.They can get low-IQ individuals brought in to the west to cause chaos and surrender.
Welcome back Prof. For some reason after reading “Why exactly did they destroy the border?” I was reminded of Hosea 8:7 “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind…” We are now reaping the whirlwind…..
I understand this might not be popular to say, but I must say it nevertheless: I see the leftest agenda as evil. And I view those who propagate it as participating in evil. They are the rabble and by and large they can’t be converted to a normal way of thinking. We must continue to fight against them (using words), and debunk their collective insanity. As a Christian, however, I also look forward to that day when I will meet Jesus face-to-face, and share eternity with like-minded believers.
P.S. I’m so happy to see you’re doing better, Victor. God is good.
So thrilled to be reading your articles again. So thankful you are in the mend. Please try not to rush your recovery. We need your insights!!
Excellent column, as usual, Mr. Hanson. Thank you. We have a huge mess in our country, and I appreciate all that POTUS Trump, ICE and CBP (and “some” local LEOs) are doing to make us safe and ensure that accurate, secure elections take place. It should not be difficult, but the Ds have made it so.
It would now sem that the three West coast states were not happy with the progress on their corruption these past, oh, 40 years or so. So they strongly embraced importing more millions to bolster their numbers. Along with their “gate pass” they also got public assistance, housing, voer ID cards, then ballots. All the better to dominate with. Amusing how all three states resist in any way they can any plan to “true the vote”
Universal voter ID, in person voting, votes not being accepted post closing time on election day, cannot come too soon.
Get better and stay better Victor. We need your words wisdom and insight. Get an executive physical yearly. Surely you can afford that. If not start a go fund me page. You’ll be amazed.
In the meantime stay amazing!
I work with many Latins and Asians. They like nice stuff and while they may not love the USA the way I do, they like law and order and full grocery stores and low crime. Since the left is counting on civic corruption, and not just skin color, they are likely to be frustrated over the long term. I can reason with my Chinese friends, including the women, my Mexican friends, and black men. White and black women, not so much.
Am so glad you are back if only partially. Missed your wisdom. Praying that God will raise up more like you as we appear, as a nation, to be circling the drain.
This Canadian is glad you are getting better – started reading you with the book “The Case for Trump.” Grateful for your ideas and analysis – Trump is way better than my friends and I every expected.
What I cannot understand is how the US federal government can leave the doors to the US wide open but nobody brought a court challenge to close the doors.
Was there no legal means to compel Biden to stop illegals pouring across the border? Can you explain this? Wasn’t Biden, for example, aiding and abetting?
If there was no means, the House and Senate need to pass such legislation or there will be 20 million more the next time the Dems win the presidency.
Every one should read Peter Schweitzer’s book, “The Invisible Coup”.
Thinking far outside the box, is the situation in Iran connected to the criminal migrant handling within the USA? Trump hates war and goes far out of his way to avoid it. The Left in the USA has many different types of feathers. One part makes a living on war machines. The number of conflicts around the world has been diminishing quickly, thanks to Trump.
Is he possibly getting some agreement from a part of the Left to get the criminal migrant element out of the country if he allows them to consume much of their war machinery in the middle east?
I am so glad that you are doing well enough to give us your thoughts from time to time. It helps to have you to keep us relatively sane. I know exactly what you are going through, it sounds like a carbon copy of my own health travails. I hope you have loving family, friends and a supportive wife to help you through it all.
They don’t like America. They actually hate America Think that it is evil. It’s all the fault of white Christian men. Some of them owned slaves. The others went along with them. Their social, political & economic power must be ended. .
The ‘federal entitlements’ is what keeps the democrats in contention. Eliminate all entitlements to non US citizens. Not only will democrats lose a large portion of their base but there will be more funds available to US citizens in need of assistance; not to mention benefits to the US taxpayer.
Good to hear you are getting better day by day. Take care.
I still can’t quite wrap my head around why the Dems need so desperately to hold on to power that they are willing to destroy their own country. Is it sheer greed for money and power (in which case, I see it as a mental health issue) or have they been captured by Maxist ideology. I just can’t imagine it.
Thank God for your continued improvement Victor.
As a native Californian in the middle of reading Peter Schweizer’s book “Invisible Coup” I fear for California specifically and the US in general for the continuation of out Western Civilization ethos.
Time for citizens to wake up.
There’s nothing abstract about it anymore. If you import millions of people and simultaneously resist even the most basic verification of who is voting, you don’t get to call that compassion — you have to explain the math. Political power runs on numbers. Expanding the pool while weakening the guardrails isn’t an accident; it’s a strategy. And when the pattern becomes this visible, the only responsible response is scrutiny. Keep asking the question they don’t want to answer: why oppose the simplest safeguards if confidence in the system is supposed to matter?
Welcome back Victor albeit on your own terms health and family being the priorities. I have no doubt that next weeks state of the union address will just be another stage for the left-wing pseudo intellectuals to continue their deceitful ways. All I can add to your many followers is simply this; God help us all in the mid-terms and VOTE. I will keep you and family in my prayers as a fellow cancer survivor.
Wow. 46 of 47. Seems like a no brainer
I always love listening to you and reading your articles. I pray you will continue fully recovering from your surgeries.
Thanks Victor! Hope you’re feeling better! Perhaps the antidote for liberals would be to immerse themselves into the actual countries that now exist with their “vision” of communal bliss!