What Will Be the Result of Biden’s Surge of Illegal Immigration?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is how the surge of illegal aliens into the United States could change American Leftists. As a presidential candidate in 2019, Joe Biden invited the migrants massing at America’s southern border to “surge” into the United States. “We immediately surge to the border all those seeking asylum.” Did you notice that he said nothing about immigrating legally?

Most Americans understand that our nation needs legal immigrants to keep America growing and becoming even better. In fact, legal immigration could be America’s greatest strength. However, there are “a few key prerequisites” about immigration, according to Victor Davis Hanson. 

Immigration must be legal and measured.

Why? Because only the host nation can adjudicate how many immigrants it can successfully accept and assimilate. It has no desire to encourage Balkanized tribalism so common in nations abroad torn apart by ethnic conflict.

America must have some knowledge of the background of immigrants, especially whether they have criminal records, belong to gangs, are importing drugs, carry infectious diseases, or can be self-supporting.

By contrast, if the first thing immigrants do is illegally cross the American border, and the second is to reside illegally in America, and the third is to obtain fraudulent identification to mask that illegality, then they will establish long patterns of illegal behavior and disrespect for their hosts.

In addition, immigration should be diverse so that large ethnic groups do not form permanent tribal sects in the fashion of the Balkans, the Middle East, or Latin America.

Ideally, the host should prefer immigrants who have some knowledge of the language and customs of the United States. And they should have some ability to be self-supporting, so as not to burden American taxpayers or overtax and deprive social services from poorer U.S. citizens.

As for the host?

America must be confident enough in and knowledgeable enough about its values, customs, and traditions to demand immigrants integrate rapidly into the body politic of the United States.

Both the host and immigrants must agree on the basic facts of immigration.

Immigrants, not the host, have chosen to leave their native land to risk a new life and identity in America.

Therefore, the relationship is, by nature, asymmetrical. The host has a perfect right, indeed a responsibility, to impose its own values upon newcomers – not vice versa.

Otherwise, if immigrants do not absorb their newly adopted culture, why would they have left and, in some sense, rejected their homeland in the first place?

To replicate in the United States the very conditions and environment that they so eagerly fled from back home?

So the host must remind immigrants that they chose a completely different paradigm from their native country. And therefore, they must be helped to embrace an entirely new national identity.

After the above discussion, Hanson then reminded his readers that – over the past four years – “the Biden administration has violated every historical canon critical to ensuring legal immigration enriches the United States.” In fact, the Biden administration “has encouraged 8 to 10 million of the world’s poorest to flood the border and to enter and reside in America without legal sanction. Most have no prior experience with American traditions, and few speak English.”

Hanson then pointed out that Americans do not know the type of person who has entered into the United States illegally. How many of them were criminals in their native countries? What was their record of employment? Are they healthy, or carrying contagious diseases? Are they members of gangs? Are they importing lethal drugs to kill Americans? Are they human traffickers?

Even worse, according to Hanson, is that America is no longer “the melting pot that once made America the world’s only successful multiracial democracy, united by the laws of the Constitution and the unique values that emanate from it. I see this difference as being like the difference between a sauce and a stew.

Rather than melting together to make a sauce known as “the American,” immigrants are now retaining the beliefs, cultures, and practices from their native countries. This makes America more like a stew with each individual ingredient maintaining its own taste and texture while giving flavor to the rest of the stew. Stew instead of sauce destroys “the American” with its unity and unique values that made America successful. Hanson continued his explanation in this way.

The combination of mass illegal immigration, without audit, into a country beset with $35 trillion in national debt, an existing 50 million residents not born in the United States, and without confidence in rapid assimilation certainly explains the disaster of illegal immigration that now manifests daily.

Hanson explained that Biden and his supporters may think that importing so many illegal immigrants will help to turn red states to blue or give more congressional districts to blue states. They may be counting on mail in voting to allow foreign nationals to vote in our elections. However, they may be fooling themselves.

But in truth, Biden is unfortunately undermining support for all immigration, legal or otherwise….

Ironically, Biden is also alienating from the Democrat Party its once loyal black and Latino voters. They, not the party elite, must deal concretely with the consequences of Biden’s callous and cynical, ideologically driven policies.

Perhaps the Left will cease destroying immigration law only when it realizes that for each illegal alien it invites in, it will lose one or more once-loyal Democratic voters.