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 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 they wished.
Not too long ago, Texas State Representative Gene Wum, D-Houston, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, jumped the shark to say out loud what is usually left unsaid about the Democratic agenda: "The day the Latino, African American, Asian and other communities realize that they share the same oppressor is the day we start winning, because we are the majority in this country now. We have the ability to take over this country and to do what is needed for everyone."
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 climax of the new hubris in the U.S. was the Biden administration's destruction of the southern border and even rudimentary 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 83-84 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 crashed 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 would by needs 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 9 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.
Former President Joe 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 make 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 were reviled, and to be 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 Trump's 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 50 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.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of "The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won," from Basic Books. You can reach him by emailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left's lies, new legislation wasn't needed to secure our border, just a new president.
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