Who Decided?

By Rich Lowry

Sunday, December 10, 2023

 

Do you remember the big national debate on whether the United States would adopt a policy to make the foreign-born share of the population the highest it’s ever been?

 

Neither do I. For the simple reason, of course, that there wasn’t one.

 

That doesn’t mean that the policy wasn’t adopted, through inertia and the Biden administration’s unilateral imposition of a de facto open border for a large swath of asylum seekers.

 

An analysis of Census data by Steve Camarota and his colleagues at the Center for Immigration Studies has found that a 4.5 million net increase in immigrants since President Biden took office has boosted the share of the foreign-born to 15 percent, the highest ever recorded.

 

You know all the black-and-white photos of immigrants coming to Ellis Island, the lore about names being changed upon arrival, “your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?

 

Today, we are eclipsing the “great wave” of immigration with an even greater wave. We hit 14.8 percent in 1890 and 14.7 in 1910, in what were, until now, the most historic decades for immigration.

 

Just last month, the Census Bureau was still projecting the foreign-born share of the population wouldn’t hit 15 percent for another decade, in 2033. Now, we could keep going up from here. “If the immigrant population continues to grow,” Camarota writes, “it will set new numerical and percentage records every year going forward.”

 

A straight-line projection shows the share of the foreign-born rising to 15.5 percent by the end of Biden’s term, and to an astonishing 17.3 percent by the end of a potential second term.

 

This is not the normal course of business. According to Camarota, the foreign-born population has grown on average by 137,000 a month since the beginning of Biden’s term, higher than Donald Trump’s pre-Covid 42,000 and Barack Obama’s 68,000.

 

What accounts for this? Some of it is a Covid bounce-back in legal immigration. But that doesn’t account for the lion’s share of the story. The Biden administration has boosted the growth in immigrants and the foreign-born share of the population well above the pre-Covid trend line.

 

It has done so by ignoring the law and greasing the skids for new arrivals even if they have no right to be here. Of the total net 4.5 million increase of immigrants on Biden’s watch, 2.5 million of that is illegal immigrants. Most of that number is solely a function of discretion and the administration’s opposition to excluding bogus asylum seekers.

 

The Biden administration’s border policy has obviously been the subject of debate, including criticism from his own party. The overall number of immigrants, though, is rarely mentioned, and even treated as an almost illegitimate topic for public consideration.

 

This makes no sense. The foreign-born share of the population has consequences for schooling, welfare, wages, politics, and the broader culture. It is at least as important, if not more so, as trade policy, Ukraine aid, the deficit, infrastructure, or a whole host of other issues that are routine fodder for congressional debate and the Sunday shows.

 

It should be subject to the approval of the American people and its representatives just like those other issues. We should decide whether we want the foreign-born share of the population to be 15 percent and growing or less than 15 percent and shrinking, and on the mix of people who are coming — low-skilled to a large extent or overwhelmingly higher-skilled?

 

Instead, we treat immigration as something that happens to us, like the weather (although progressives now seek to influence the weather, so maybe this is a dated analogy). It isn’t. We are making the choices that have gotten us to this point.

 

The fact is that immigration has operated under its own power, and under false pretenses, since the immigration reform of 1965. One reason there’s so little discussion of the underlying issue is that many people simply don’t know the historic numbers involved. Conservatives, who should be driving the debate, are often wary of being portrayed as hateful and close-minded by focusing on overall numbers, and the high levels of illegal immigration for so long have made that a politically easy target, even though it’s only part of the issue.

 

In short, there’s been no debate on 15 percent, and, shamefully, one doesn’t seem in the offing.