The Great Immigration Experiment
The mass intake of foreigners has decisively failed. Can we decolonize America?
The post The Great Immigration Experiment appeared first on The American Conservative.
The Great Immigration Experiment
The mass intake of foreigners has decisively failed. Can we decolonize America?
Remarks delivered to NatCon 4 in Washington, DC.
You are living in an experiment.
In March of this year, the foreign-born or immigrant population in the U.S.—both legal and illegal—hit record highs.
- 51.6 million people in the U.S. are foreign-born
- That is more than 15 percent of the population of this country—higher than at any time in our nation’s history.
- Many consider these immigrants to be “workers,” but more than half of the immigrants who arrived since 2022 are not employed.
- And of the approximately 2.5 million recent arrivals who are not employed only about 8 percent say they are actively looking for work.
- Immigrants make up over a fifth of residents in California, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Florida.
- But less populous states are also seeing unprecedented immigration growth, with immigrant populations growing by 40 percent or more in Delaware, North and South Dakota, and West Virginia.
An experiment is a test to discover if something works.
The numbers I’ve just described are a national experiment. And the American people are the guinea pigs.
We know this is an experiment—a test, for which we don’t know the outcome—because this level of immigration is new and different in at least three ways.
First, the scale. The amount of immigration we are experiencing is unlike anything our country has experienced before. The U.S. is home to more international migrants than any other country in the world, and more than the next four countries on the list combined. And in fact, no country in modern history has experienced numbers like these.
Second, the speed. Nine million aliens entered the country in all of the 1990s; now 10 million have entered during just the first three years of the Biden administration, with 58 percent of that increase coming as illegal immigration. This growth is far greater than even our government predictions would expect. The federal census data from 2020 predicted that the foreign-born population of the U.S. would not hit 15 percent until 2033. Yet it is 2024 and we have already surpassed that prediction.
Third, this wave of immigration is unprecedented in its diversity. Previous waves of immigration tended to come from particular parts of the world, that made absorption easier. But now, immigrants come from every corner of the globe, speak every language and dialect, worship every kind of god, and reflect every culture that exists on the planet.
And all of this matters because immigration can only be sustained when it can be assimilated. This is not a new idea—our Founders discussed and agreed on this point. As Jefferson put it: immigrants “should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation.”
Consider the practical implications of immigration. Immigrants are more likely to be low-skilled compared to native-born Americans. According to one study, nearly a third of adult immigrants to the United States lack even a high school diploma. And about half of immigrants to the U.S. have limited—if any—English proficiency.
So imagine a newly-arrived immigrant to this country, who is low-skilled, has fewer than 12 years of education, speaks little (if any) English, and generally knows little about American culture, government, our Constitution, or their legal rights.
Of course, that person can succeed here, and there are inspiring stories of those who have. But that person cannot succeed without a lot of help. Education, language remediation, instruction about citizenship and history, a supportive and high-trust community that is capable of conveying and reinforcing this information; plus job training; public assistance; housing assistance; healthcare assistance…the list goes on.
Now multiply that one person by tens of millions.
We do not have a system for providing the help that millions of immigrants need to succeed in this country. And of course, a government confused about basic biology and incapable of fulfilling basic functions, like holding free and fair elections, is not well-equipped to assimilate tens of millions of foreign nationals.
This is different than previous generations. We are told that immigration is part of our country’s heritage, so we have to accept it—but during the height of the Progressive era in the United States, American businesses who imported immigrant labor also voluntarily promoted “Americanization.” Henry Ford created and compelled his immigrant employees to attend 8-month English language courses and other Americanization activities, believing that it was his responsibility to teach them—and this is a quote—“American ways, the English language, and the right way to live.” This was not unique among American corporations, and it spread to many prominent non-profits. Eventually, 30 states enacted legislative Americanization programs.
I don’t have to tell you that there are no widespread “Americanization” efforts trying to assimilate immigrants to this country today. In fact, in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, “Americanization” efforts are actively discouraged.
So today, our country is experimenting with the massive importation of immigrants to this country, a majority of them illegal. It is an experiment because it has never been done before, and no one can assure us that it can work or that it will work.
Who is running this experiment—and why?
There are two groups running this experiment.
First, the elites in this country—the ruling class—are the ones in the position to decide whether our border is open or closed, and to what degree. And elites benefit from open borders, so that is what they choose.
Elites can afford home help—from private tutors to gardeners—and other services, and those things are cheaper if there is a plentiful labor class of low-skilled workers.
That’s because low-skilled immigrant workers compete primarily with low-income native-born workers, who then suffer disproportionately from the effects of mass immigration. Low-income native-born workers suffer almost a 1 percent drop in income for every 1 percent increase in the immigrant composition of their industry.
And although mass immigration has cascading negative effects throughout the economy, the elite are largely blind to them.
Unsurprisingly, housing more than 51 million immigrants causes pressures on the domestic housing supply. Home prices in this country have skyrocketed, making homes now unaffordable in 80 percent of the United States. And in more than half of the U.S., home prices are accelerating faster than wages.
Immigrants are straining healthcare availability throughout the country. One safety net hospital in Denver treated 20,000 illegal immigrants in 2023 alone, resulting in $10 million of uncompensated care provided.
And immigrants are also straining schools. Again, in Denver public schools in a typical year enroll 500 illegal immigrant children, they have averaged 250 per week this year. Enormous, unplanned-for costs caused by this surge have required emergency appropriations, paying for remedial English language education and sourcing healthcare, food, and other services for immigrant minors.
Immigration also stresses state and federal penal systems. According to the Department of Justice, one in five federal prisoners is an alien, and although many of them have committed immigration offenses, many more are incarcerated for other reasons. Forty-six percent of these aliens have committed drug-trafficking or other drug-related offenses and another 25 percent have committed a variety of other violent criminal offenses, like rape. I don’t need to remind you of the ever-increasing number of cases of young America women raped and murdered by illegal aliens in this country. And every crime committed by someone present illegally is a preventable crime.
Illegal aliens impose enormous social welfare costs on the country, receiving between $84 and $94 billion more in government benefits and services than they pay in taxes.
All of these things disadvantage low- and middle-income Americans disproportionately.
And to add insult to injury, our current DEI regime ensures that a leg-up will be given to foreign-born candidates when they come into direct competition with native-born Americans, and most especially (though not exclusively) native-born whites.
Elites, however, can weather these consequences by buying their way into private healthcare, private schools, and gated neighborhoods. So for elites, open borders are all upside, and that’s part of why we have them.
The other group behind our mass immigration crisis are the multiculturalists, who supply the ideological underpinnings. Multiculturalism gained ascendancy in the 1990s and has only strengthened its grip since then.
Multiculturalism is an anti-Western ideology. It holds that America is composed of many distinct cultures; that the dominant Protestant Anglo culture has systemically subjugated these cultures; and that these cultures must be liberated.
Why? Because America should not have a single culture. Disunion is the express goal.
Multiculturalism has completely pervaded our educational system for decades and is adopted at the highest levels of the Democrat party and the U.S. administrative state – it is even unthinkingly espoused by some Republicans.
The result is that the U.S. uniquely among all nations encourages immigrants to hold on to their language, culture, and birth country identity.
And ever-greater numbers of immigrants only makes this easier. With greater numbers, it is easier to replicate one’s home country on American soil and so avoid assimilation altogether.
U.S. immigrants’ countries of origin want this effect, too, and deliberately cultivate it. Wealthy nations can advocate their strategic foreign policy interests through their wealth, power, and influence. But poor countries do so by exporting people.
The net effect of elite policy preferences combined with the pathology of multiculturalism is nothing short of the colonization of America.
If you doubt, look no further than the Minnesotan Representative Ilhan Omar’s now-famous rally in Minnesota just last month. She spoke Somali, to a crowd of Somali immigrants, and when the former prime minister of Somalia took the podium in support of Omar, he said her “interests aren’t those of Minnesota or the American people but those of Somalia.”
How will a future Trump administration decolonize America?
Let me be honest: I will be light on specifics here, and that’s intentional. This is a time for discretion. We’ve seen too many of our policy ideas be announced in advance, only to be reverse-engineered by blue state attorneys general and leftist interest groups into legal challenges.
But there are two basic things to be done:
If you encounter the federal government directly and you are present here illegally, you will be sent home. Period. No got-aways—not at the border, but also not in the interior of the country. No orders of removal that are not executed.
Many say that we should prioritize only the removal of criminal aliens—or violent criminal aliens—those who have raped or murdered American citizens. But such a policy essentially endorses indefinite lawlessness at our borders and makes explicit that anyone and everyone can come to the U.S. and remain in perpetuity, until they harm one of you.
No, removal is not reserved for violent criminals but is the consequence of having immigrated here illegally.
And second, we will start making it a little “less good” for those present in this country illegally, by making things a little more fair for native-born Americans.
Right now, illegal immigrants in many American cities are receiving two years of free housing, free healthcare, food assistance, and other benefits—benefits that have never been extended to native-born Americans, including Americans who have fought and bled for this nation in foreign conflicts.
And illegal aliens are also competing with Americans in so many other parts of life—banking, healthcare, housing. In all of these areas, every effort must be made to serve those who are lawfully present first, in fairness.
To give you an example of what I mean: In July 2023, Florida required emergency rooms to ask patients their immigration status. And in the year that followed, Florida has experienced a 54 percent reduction in spending on emergency care through its federally-mandated Medicaid program for illegal aliens. In the words of one pro-immigration activist, Florida has experienced an “exodus of migrants.”
We are not the only ones discussing how to undo mass immigration and its consequences. Many Western European states, long lauded by the left for their meek acceptance of mass immigration, are now attempting to rouse the energy and the will to confront millions of unassimilated and under-employed immigrant men. Austria, Denmark, Norway, even Spain and Sweden, are moving to restore some sense of balance to their immigrant flows and some modicum of safety to their streets.
In many instances, however, these efforts are proving to be too little, too late.
I know what too late looks like, and that is why I am willing to say these hard truths. I grew up in a small-scale experiment of the kind now being attempted at the national level.
Stockton, California, the city of my birth, was the first city in the U.S. in which more than 50 percent of the city’s residents were minorities, a number that included native-born blacks and Hispanics who were already disproportionately confronted with the challenges of economic hardship, but who were now forced to compete with an enormous influx of low-skilled foreign-born migrants.
There are those who will say that it is just coincidence that today Stockton is one of the most violent jurisdictions in modern America, with consistently one of the highest per-capita homicide rates; it’s just coincidence that the city is replete with long-forgotten diseases, like a 55 percent spike in tuberculosis just this year; it’s simply a coincidence that, despite its high crime-rate and persistent joblessness, Stockton has some of the most unaffordable housing in America.
But it’s not a coincidence.
Stockton is a precursor of a kind of community springing up all around our nation: a community where ordinary American citizens—black, white, brown—are made to feel unwelcome in their own neighborhoods, alienated from their own country.
The immigrants who survive a place like Stockton are those who work hard, privilege education, speak English, and love this country.
And while I appreciate the knowledge I gained about the architecture of Angkor Wat, the food of the Mayas, and the Zodiac tradition of Lunar New Year, my classmates and I would have been better served to learn the story of this nation’s founding, to be Americanized.
The Stockton “experiment,” which has been an unmitigated disaster, proves why the only solution is to decolonize America.
There is no sustainable way to absorb the immigration this country has experienced and remain a cohesive polity.
Already, though, the corporate media are suggesting that the very thought of deporting anyone is racist and genocidal.
But I’ve explained the experiment to you. And I think we are far enough along for the facts to give us a good idea of how it will come out.
Pat Buchanan once asked whether in an age of mass immigration we can truly say we are still one nation and one unified people.
It is a question we should still be asking today.
We cannot live solely on the memory of our republic.
Mass immigration, left unchecked and without consequence, will only continue. And it will remain incompatible with America as we once knew it and hope to know it again. It is profoundly unfair to millions of Americans in this country, who have been pushed aside for the arrival of millions of aliens, all in the service of elite policy preferences and the ideology of multiculturalism.
It is time not just to end mass immigration, but to reverse it. To rediscover American culture, not multi-culture.
To decolonize and then re-Americanize this country.
The post The Great Immigration Experiment appeared first on The American Conservative.