What Was the Purpose of Opening Our Southern Border?

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Now that we’ve seen, in the first eight weeks of the Trump administration, a 96% reduction in illegal entries across the southern border—and this was done, remember, without the supposed need for comprehensive “immigration reform”—it’s logical to ask what the last four years were about.

Why did we have a completely open border? Why did 12 million people come into the United States from all over the world under illegal auspices? What was the reason? Why would people do that?

And remember, right now, the United States has somewhere between 50 and 60 million residents that were not born in the United States. Twenty-seven percent of the population of California is foreign-born, of all statuses—citizen, legal, illegal.

That’s an enormous challenge in assimilation, acculturation, integration. And we’re not doing that, of course. But why would we do that? Why would we have 16%, now, of the population of the United States as foreign-born? What was the rationale behind that, especially in the context of illegal entries?

Looking back, what were the Democrats, what was then-President Joe Biden, what were the handlers of Biden thinking? I suppose they thought that maybe people who were coming in without English, without high school diplomas—for the most part—without capital, and without skills would be dependent on federal largess.

I know you’re gonna say people who are not here legally cannot get Medicaid. Well, they can get Medicaid in an emergency. In California, anybody can get Medicaid, which we here call Medi-Cal.

So many people came in illegally and got on Medi-Cal that the system is broke. It’s $6.7 billion in the hole. Fifty percent of the population, of all births, are on Medi-Cal. And 40% of the California resident population are on Medi-Cal.

So, was the idea to get people dependent on the government? And then that would make government grow and more redistribution and more higher taxes. A way of, what? Having equity? Taking from the small, supposed, greedy elite and making them pay higher taxes to fund this social welfare?

Or was it utopianism, globalism, 21st century-ism, end of the worldism? In which you think that borders are a 19th-century construct. We’re all people of the same planet, as we see in Europe. So, let’s just get rid of borders. Let’s make it everything from Yucatan to the Arctic Circle, we can just go anywhere we want in this utopian dream. There’s no difference.

Why is somebody who was born in Chiapas or Oaxaca or Michoacan to dire poverty and cartels and corruption, why doesn’t he get the chance of somebody who’s born in Malibu? Well, as social architects, maybe the Left thought he should have the chance. So, we’ll just destroy the border.

Or a third reason why—was it more sinister? Did they think that after 2020, when the majority of states changed the balloting laws to such a degree that earlier mail-in and early voting had only constituted 30% of those who voted, 70% voted on Election Day—now 70% of all American voters do not vote on Election Day. They don’t go before somebody and show a driver’s license. Did they think, under this system, they could bring in 12 million people and, in some cases, they could vote?

Now, that’s a very controversial topic. The Left says that they never do vote. I’m not suggesting that they do in numbers, although, I will suggest that although it’s illegal at the state level, in most states, it’s absolutely illegal at the federal level.

Sixteen local jurisdictions allow illegal aliens to vote in city council, school board elections, local referendums. It’s a trend that the Left is trying to cultivate and mine. So, do they think that, eventually, the more people you bring in—so you have 50 or 60 million people who were not born in the United States—they’re going to be a constituency? And equity being what it is and parity being—they deserve to vote.

Was that the long-term goal? Or was it a fourth reason, just simple nihilism, chaos? People were angry at the Trump years. Or they were angry at traditional America. They think it’s racist and sexist. It doesn’t provide diversity or equity and inclusion. So, what we’re going to do is just flood the zone. Twelve million people. And we’ll see how you like it. We’re gonna put them in hotels in New York. We’re gonna send them to the inner city. And we’re not gonna send them to Malibu or Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. But we’re just gonna flood the zone and just make so much chaos that you’ll have to deal with it, sort of like California. Deal with it.

I don’t have the answer. I don’t know what was behind it. But I do know that never in the history of the United States, within four years, did the government, by intent, destroy the border, welcome in 12 million people, during the first year of a COVID-19 lockdown, where all of us had to be very careful, wear masks, and have proof of vaccination, with no audit at all of the people who were not here.

It’s inexplicable. And it’s so inexplicable that I’m gonna end today with I don’t have any answers other than providing the possible choices and alternatives I outlined.

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