By Matthew X. Wilson
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
In the aftermath of the triumph of three far-left, Zohran
Mamdani–backed candidates in yesterday’s New York City Democratic congressional
primaries, many on the right are taking greater notice of the impact that mass
migration from Third World countries has had on Gotham’s politics. It’s an
understandable impulse: More than one-third of the city’s population
(and 43 percent of its workforce) was born abroad. Half of New York City
residents speak a language other than English at
home, and one-quarter aren’t proficient in our country’s official language.
While New York has long had among the largest foreign-born populations of
America’s major cities, today’s levels are at highs not seen in nearly 100 years,
since the Ellis Island waves of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Mamdani slate of congressmen-in-waiting — Claire
Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, each sure to win in their
deep-blue districts — all support abolishing Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, curtailing deportations, dramatically expanding legal migration,
and welcoming illegal immigrants. Avila Chevalier, perhaps the most extreme of
the bunch (and that’s saying quite a bit), once tweeted “F*** Kamala Harris” after the
then–vice president asked migrants to stop illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico
border. She has also previously called for open borders,
banning all deportations, abolishing prisons, and seizing private property.
Are recent waves of mass migration, legal and illegal,
affecting New York City’s politics? As understandably worried right-wingers
raise that question, a contingent of nominally right-of-center voices is
stepping up to assure us that there’s absolutely no way that migration has
anything to do with the rise of radical left politics in New York City. Daniel
Di Martino, a Venezuela-born economist and one of the right’s most prominent
pro-immigration advocates, tweeted, “Now they’re going to blame
immigrants for native-born voting for socialism even if they don’t. Incredible
hoop jumping.” Robby Soave, senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason,
argued that Avila Chevalier’s success
among young and highly educated voters in her Upper Manhattan–anchored district
“undercuts an idea popular with some conservatives, especially Stephen Miller,
that the radical left takeover is a result of importing the third world.”
But just because young, college-educated leftists moving
into Bushwick, the East Village, or Harlem from suburban Illinois (or wherever
else they’re originally from) are voting for Mamdani-aligned, radical-left
candidates doesn’t negate the role that mass migration has also played in
radicalizing and balkanizing New York City’s politics. Data from last year’s
mayoral election shows that Mamdani performed very well among foreign-born New
York City residents as well as those who had just recently arrived. An October
2025 poll showed Mamdani with the support of 62
percent of foreign-born voters, versus just 31 percent of those born in the
U.S. An ABC News exit poll indicated that Mamdani won those who
had lived in New York City for fewer than ten years with 81 percent of the
vote; Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, beat Mamdani by 11 percent among voters
born in the city.
Of course, the fifth-generation African American in East
Harlem or the Dominican grandfather in Washington Heights probably did not vote
for Avila Chevalier, a wannabe
female Che Guevara. But the bizarre effort we’re seeing to downplay
migration’s crucial role in the rise of socialism and Third Worldism in New York City’s
politics does not accurately reflect the electoral coalition that the mayor and
his Democratic Socialists of America allies are — rather successfully —
building. That coalition is between college-educated, underemployed,
transplant, rabidly anti-Israel, and largely white and multiracial leftists (a
group my former professor Gregory Conti has amusingly labeled the lumpencommentariat)
and impoverished, disproportionately Muslim recent
immigrants looking for economic handouts and to dismantle America’s immigration
enforcement system — so they can bring in relatives and friends, regularize the
status of family members, or for whatever other reason.
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