A cartoon by the late JB Handelsman in the New Yorker has stuck with me all these years. It shows a Native American family standing on the beach watching a boatload of Pilgrims row ashore from the Mayflower.
“Well,” says the father, “They look pretty undocumented to me.”
To me, it’s a useful reminder that to some extent, no matter how extended, with the exception of those Native Americans, we all ultimately are immigrants on this blessed continent. The question should be, how can we wisely, humanely, and efficiently manage a steady flow of newcomers who add value while putting America First, as President Trump so aptly puts it.
My father and mother were immigrants from Canada, where the Great Depression lasted longer. As a child, I can remember my mother’s citizenship ceremony. It was a big deal.
Without legal immigrants coming in varying waves throughout our history, the United States and those of us presently enjoying its bounties wouldn’t have a fraction of the success we have all enjoyed. Now, since Americans are marrying later and, thus, having fewer children, we’ll need many more legal immigrants in coming decades to continue the growth and prosperity, manning business, industry, and the services.
Unfortunately, Joseph R. Biden Jr., our misbegotten former president, and his seditious puppeteers, who’ve yet to be punished, have sullied our historic immigration story by their wanton disregard of our laws and culture for political gain.
During Biden’s pathetic 1,461-day reign of error, his administration willfully allowed upwards of 10 million immigrants to enter the country illegally, undocumented, unvetted, and untracked. That’s a crime by him and them.
The goal, of course, was to create an immense cohort of appreciative newcomers and their progeny who would vote for Democrats as long as that party's operatives could prevent any effective, uniform system of voter ID.
Biden people even cravenly moved thousands of illegals inland on buses and unannounced midnight flights, where they’ve mingled with the existing urban population of illegals, making detection and eviction more difficult. (See Minnesota.)
This has added immense unfunded financial pressures of billions on local community resources for education, health, welfare, housing, and law enforcement. Local taxpayers will be footing those bills for decades.
Thankfully, President Trump stopped that invasion on Day One of Term Two.
Here's an ugly, unjust reality: It's not fair to the thousands of immigrants who are following all the entry rules and patiently waiting abroad in line for years. But despite any campaign promises, we will never expel all of the new illegals, just as we have never expelled all or even most of illegal immigrants in past decades.
We can try. Every one gone is progress. And the obvious effort might deter others from coming in the future. But the enduring national will and the means for such a years-long, contentious process are simply not there. Biden's handlers cynically knew that.
President Trump is wisely focused on deporting criminals among the immigrants.
The fact is, despite specious claims by sanctuary-city advocates, every one of those 10 million immigrants broke the law by illegally entering the country. Hence, the term "illegal immigrants," which some media avoid to fit their narrative.
Thousands also have broken other laws while present in this country, and thousands of others came here because they broke laws back home and fled apprehension.
Now, the administration has begun the complex, costly, and unnecessarily controversial process of removing illegal immigrants accused of crimes here and in their home countries.
From Jan. 20 last year to Dec. 11, the administration arrested 595,000 illegal immigrants. Of those, the Department of Homeland Security reports 416,000 or 70 percent, have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges just in the U.S.
That’s a lot of unnecessary crime, including awful rapes and homicides, inflicted on innocent Americans by the willful negligence of Biden and his cronies.
Now, ask yourself who could sincerely oppose removing criminals from American society? Key word: sincerely.
Though it’s hard to wrap our minds around this, today, there are Americans legally protesting ICE agents legally arresting illegal immigrants who have committed other felonies here and in their homelands. Inexplicably, some protesting immigrants wave the flag of the country they fled; to my knowledge, they were neither forced nor invited, and no one is holding them here.
There are, however, some protesters who are sincerely motivated by hourly wages from leftist or progressive organizations for confronting ICE agents, especially if media are present.
For those of us who endured the tumultuous Vietnam War years and perhaps covered the countless antiwar demonstrations, today's protest tactics are sadly familiar. The spitting and personal verbal assaults, most of which cannot be printed here, are intentionally crude and offensive.
They are meant to provoke a response to create “news.” Think staged photo-op only add violence. No useful publicity for a cause can be had from silent demonstrators staring at police silently staring back.
Hard objects get thrown. I’ve also seen protesters rip old-fashioned radio antennas off cars and swing them at police like rapiers. Hence, the face shields.
Such provocations, which somehow get omitted from resulting media accounts, sometimes cause forceful reactions by authorities that get featured in the resulting media accounts, just as the protesters intend. That's why they get paid. It’s like sporting events where referees miss the initiating offense but spot the retaliation. The Democrats’ 1968 convention in Chicago was a prime example.
You might also notice that the violent anti-ICE demonstrations are occurring in deeply blue sanctuary areas such as Minnesota and California. But they are absent in red states such as Texas and Tennessee.
So far, the Trump administration has deported a little more than 600,000 illegal immigrants. Through government financial incentives, a million more have been motivated to self-deport. I find that revealing: That you immigrate into a country allegedly seeking a better life, but your departure can be bought for $1,000.
Guess who said this:
We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.
That was Barack Obama in 2005. He became president four years later and deported 1.8 million illegals in his first 36 months (50,000 a month) and another 400,000 illegals in 2012, his reelection year.
Remember all the protests when he did that?
No, you don’t. There weren’t any. In fact, Obama gave ICE's Tom Homan a major presidential award for facilitating so many deportations. The same guy is now Trump's border czar.
So, we must suspect something else at play: that much of the current immigration-enforcement “protest” has less to do with concern for the poor peasants who walked up through Mexico than it does with the rich guy occupying the Oval Office.
Trump is the one who’s haunted Democrats since June of 2015, when he and his immigrant wife, Melania, rode down the escalator in Trump Tower to launch his unlikely presidential campaign. That historically outrageous effort was certainly doomed until it wasn’t, and Hillary Clinton was struck dumb overnight.
The nation’s current immigration tumult is very much different from the immigration influx of my post-war childhood. World War II caused the largest human displacement in history; more than 40 million people became DPs — Displaced Persons.
Of those, an estimated million came to the U.S., many fleeing the Iron Curtain that the Soviet Union lowered to seal off Communist Eastern Europe.
There were, of course, assimilation challenges as the newcomers learned new ways. I understand some sent packages of clothing or dry goods back to “the old country.” But there was no going back for these immigrants.
The motives of today’s newcomers are different. They are financial — work and benefits. In 2024, immigrants in the U.S. transferred $161 billion out of the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean.
That included almost $65 billion sent to Mexico. No wonder Mexico doesn’t mind caravans of citizens heading north; that amount of new money is four percent of the country’s GDP.
During last October alone, individuals wired remittances to Mexico averaging about $400 each. But their total was almost $6 billion. Western Union assesses some minor fees but makes its profits largely on the currency exchange rate.
In contrast, the DPs in the 1940’s were here permanently to rebuild their lives as Americans and construct safe new futures for their children, as immigrants had for countless generations going back to that rowboat in the cartoon.
I remember sometimes walking with my father through the Cleveland paper-box factory he ran. The women in babushkas at the machines did not speak English yet, but they smiled, waved, and bowed. Some tried to kiss his hand in appreciation.
“Good people,” Dad would say.
When an employee’s daughter married, my father would be invited to the wedding, often in a union hall with me in tow. He would speak briefly about building new lives in this wonderful land, as he had. Sentence by sentence, a man translated for the appreciative crowd. They applauded.
To my primary-school mind, those weddings were reasons to celebrate because of the pierogis, cabbage rolls, and cakes at the buffet table. But inevitably, a brawny man would scoop me up and hold me high to the crowd as proof of the day’s import, that the boss had brought his firstborn to their gathering. I would wave a sausage roll. Everyone laughed.
Dad would present the bride with an envelope. I would grab one more roll. And we left, having witnessed peacefully the creation of yet another brand-new American family from earnest immigrants totally and proudly investing themselves and their families' futures in the United States of America.
But that was then.
