Is it Too Late to Reverse the Effects of Mass Migration in America?

Year after year, the U.S. border remains open. Laws on the books against illegal migration go unenforced as the federal government, particularly when Democrats are in office, encourages migrants with asylum status, work permits, room, board, and more.

Meanwhile, well-intentioned border officials have their hands tied as the White House refuses to supply them with the resources needed to adequately fend off the throngs of migrants. And border states (like Texas) that attempt to take matters into their own hands find themselves facing furious legal opposition from Washington. 

Even if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election and immediately closes the border, as he should, he will be confronted by a massive foreign population within the United States.

What is the exact size of that population?

No one knows for sure. Mainstream outfits like Pew Research say the number of illegal aliens within America’s borders totals approximately 10.5 million — but the political establishment has been parroting that figure for years. After all this time, and with the Biden administration only exacerbating the problem, it is doubtless much larger than mainstream institutions would like us to believe. 

After all, according to a report from the House Judiciary Committee commissioned by chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the final months of last year saw migrant encounters at the southern border totalling in the hundreds of thousands per month:

Three years into the Biden Administration, the crisis at the southwest border is worse than ever. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered a record-breaking 269,735 illegal aliens along the southwest border in September 2023, shattering the previous record of 252,315 encounters in December 2022. … The September 2023 record reportedly stood for just three months—December 2023 saw more than 302,000 illegal alien encounters along the southwest border. With such a large and seemingly unending influx of illegal aliens into the United States, Americans would be right to conclude that the border crisis is not a side effect, but instead a goal, of the Biden Administration’s radical open-borders immigration policies.

If they are serious about saving the nation from the destructive effects of illegal migration, Trump and other policymakers are going to have to make a choice — will they follow through on promises of deporting those who have come into the country in defiance of its laws? Or will they shuffle their feet and pass the buck on the issue once more?

America is already being torn apart by factionalism and tribalism, and mass migration has contributed to the American public’s shift to the left. If this large foreign-born population is allowed to remain, the consequences would be transformative. Certain regions, such as the American southwest, would become a No Man’s Land for the brand of constitutional conservatism that currently characterizes the Republican Party. Such areas would fall into one-party Democratic rule unless the GOP drastically changes into another left-wing party in order to appeal to the electorate there.

This phenomenon can already be seen in states like California, Arizona and Nevada. Where once the GOP was competitive in these states, gradually, as the demographics have shifted thanks to south-of-the-border migration, Democrats have become dominant. In Texas, Latinos now outnumber non-Hispanic whites, so even the Lone Star State, the bastion of freedom and constitutionalism, could be lost to the Left within a generation.

What is clear is that America cannot afford not to be serious about a thorough, comprehensive repatriation plan — even though such action would inevitably incite heated opposition from Democrats and the mainstream media. It would be a moment for Republicans to prove whether they have a spine and prioritize the well-being of the country over a pat on the head from the establishment.

But the question remains: Even if a large swath of those currently in the country illegally are returned to their places of origin, can the damage fully be undone? After all, much mass migration has been legal through the giving out of visas and work permits, and many who initially entered the United States illegally have eventually gotten legal status, even citizenship. And their children are U.S.-born citizens.

To mitigate these effects, the country must pursue the former combination of public policy and social norms that, prior to the 1960s, urged immigrants to assimilate — to learn the language, customs, and culture.

The 20th century saw large waves of migration — but how many Americans today with German, Polish, Hungarian, Danish, French, Russian, or Italian last names actually speak the language of their ancestors and live the original culture? These waves of immigrants were assimilated, and their children and grandchildren grew up identifying with the greater American culture.

The same can happen with the largely Latin American populations in the country today. The racial aspect is overstated by the Left in order to stoke further division; Hispanic and Latino are not races, and many Latinos are white. In fact, most Hispanics in the U.S. used to consider themselves white, meaning they — like Americans whose ancestry is Polish, French, Russian, etc. — did not see themselves as being separate from the rest of the country. 

But the Left has stoked the trends of “racial consciousness” and “Hispanic Identity” to bifurcate Latinos from the rest of American society and thus have another “victimized” minority group whom they can manipulate, as they have done with black Americans. This can be seen in the fact that, per the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2010 and 2020 “The number of people of Hispanic or Latino origin who identified as White alone decreased by 52.9%, down from 26.7 million to 12.6 million over the decade,” whereas the “number of people who were not of Hispanic or Latino origin who identified as White alone declined at a slower rate, with a -2.6% change.”

What this means is that the Left has been extremely successful in propagandizing Hispanics for the sake of dividing them from and pitting them against “white America.” The racial perception that Latinos have of themselves — and that others have of them — has changed.

Ultimately, cutting off the flow of mass migration is crucial to ending these divisions and restoring balance. Immigrant groups, assuming their numbers are low, naturally assimilate eventually. The children and grandchildren adopt the language and culture around them from school, neighbors, work, and the media. This is what happened with previous immigrant demographics, and the same would happen with Latinos and Asians.

The problem lies in the constant, large wave of new migration. This makes it so there is always a fresh group of new migrants who cling to their native culture even while some Hispanics in the second or third generation have already assimilated. And because the numbers are so large, it becomes easier to get away with not assimilating; the migrants make communities and have media in their native language, and advocacy groups begin demanding the schools be bilingual.

The answer is that it is not too late; the country can theoretically still heal if it cuts off the mass migration, repatriates those here illegally, and pushes back against leftist race politics. But it will take elected officials with the will to put country ahead of popularity.

To learn more about The John Birch Society’s campaign to stop and reverse the effects of mass migration, click here.