And the dangers of a reactionary revolt.

Andrew Sullivan

Jun 2, 2023

There was a point — somewhere in the mid-2010s — when it seemed as if a plurality and, in some cases, even a majority of Western voters had finally decided to restrain mass immigration. The election of Trump and the success of Brexit were both part of this shift. Trump promised to build a wall; Boris insisted that a line had to be drawn.

But now, almost a decade later, after four years of Trump and seven years of Brexit, we can see that … basically nothing happened. Covid made it hard to see long-term trends, but as the pandemic recedes, it’s now crystal clear that mass immigration has not just continued as before in the US and the UK — but has even increased, quite substantially. Both countries are now absorbing a huge new wave of immigrants, reaching historic highs in their share of foreign-born citizens, and there seems to be no slowing the pace of it.

In the face of a new influx, the Biden administration has all but given up on immigration enforcement in the interior of the country. Under Obama, 155,000 illegal non-citizens were deported on average each year. Under Trump, it was 81,000. Under Biden, it is now just 28,000. Meanwhile, the number of new US citizens reached one million in 2022 alone, the third-highest number in American history (1996 and 2008 were higher). The foreign-born population is now almost 50 million people — with about three million added since the beginning of 2021 when Biden took office. Next year, it’s likely the proportion of Americans born in another country will be the highest ever — surpassing the records set in 1890 and 1910. You can see it, in part, in the numbers encountered at the border: 2.4 million last year in a global pandemic.

Yes, the Biden administration has had some key successes in opening more avenues to legal immigration — which has brought down the number of illegal apprehensions since the end of Title 42 last month. Immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti now have a far easier legal pathway — and around 30,000 people a month, or 360,000 a year, are arriving that way. That’s far more humane, and preferable, but it is effectively managing the huge influx rather than taming it. By the end of his first term, Biden will be presiding over the highest number and highest proportion of foreign-born Americans in the entire history of the republic.

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