I am not xenophobic. I am not anti-immigrant—in fact, if it wasn’t for legal immigration, my wife wouldn’t be an American, I never would have met her, and we wouldn’t have four awesome kids. The USA wouldn’t have Elon Musk or many other citizens who have contributed greatly to the country.
I am, however, opposed to two things: 1) illegal immigration, because it’s well… illegal, and 2) overwhelming change at a chaotic pace. When you make extreme changes to a system within a short period of time, it almost inevitably creates havoc and comes with unintended—usually negative—consequences.
Unfortunately, that’s where we find ourselves today as former President Biden threw open the floodgates at the southern border to illegals even as legal immigration continued at a high rate. The numbers are staggering, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). They released a study Tuesday called “Foreign-Born Number and Share of U.S. Population at All-Time Highs in January 2025”:
At 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population, the foreign-born share is higher now than at the prior peaks reached in 1890 and 1910. No U.S. government survey or census has ever shown such a large foreign-born population.
The current numbers have rendered Census Bureau projections obsolete. Just two years ago, the Bureau projected the foreign-born share would not reach 15.8 percent until 2042.
The 53.3 million foreign-born residents are the largest number ever in U.S. history; and the 8.3 million increase in the last four years is larger than the growth in the preceding 12 years.
The above figures represent net growth. New arrivals are offset by outmigration and deaths in the existing immigrant population. Our best estimate is that 11.5 to 12.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settled in the country in the last four years.
It’s jaw-dropping stuff.
At 15.8% of the total US population, the foreign-born share is higher now than at the prior peaks reached in 1890 and 1910. pic.twitter.com/hEDVklHtLi
— Center for Immigration Studies (@CIS_org) March 12, 2025
There are plenty more numbers in the report, but you get the idea: a whole lot of people have come into our country in recent years. Why would this be a problem? We’re a nation of immigrants, aren’t we?
Yes, but as I said at the beginning, if you shake up something too radically and too quickly, you’re bound to create consequences. In an editorial Tuesday, Steven Camarota, Director of Research for CIS, explained what some of those repercussions will mean:
The record level of immigration has profound implications for taxpayers, schools, American workers, and our ability to assimilate so many people.
The public rightly senses this level of immigration is unsustainable, which is a key reason they elected Donald Trump...
No government policy impacts virtually every aspect of American society the way immigration does…
In 2015, Pew Research estimated that legal and illegal immigrants, plus their descendants, added 72 million people to the US population since 1965. The number is closer to 90 million today...
One of the ways assimilation works is that a predominance of the native-born and their children make the absorption of English, along with other aspects of American culture and identity, almost inevitable for immigrants. But the scale of contemporary immigration changes this dynamic.
The numerical increase of 8.3 million foreign-born in the last four years is larger than in any four-year period in American history. pic.twitter.com/zdf2qgUqEs
— Center for Immigration Studies (@CIS_org) March 12, 2025
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Camarota goes on to discuss the fact that the high immigration rates—legal and illegal—“almost certainly” pushed some American-born workers out of the labor force. He’s got the numbers to back it up:
In January of 2025, 20% of all workers were foreign born. Though many are skilled, most immigrant workers do not have a bachelor’s degree.
The increase in immigration since the 1960s has coincided with a steady increase in the share of US-born men (ages 16 to 64) without a bachelor’s degree not in the labor force — neither working nor looking for work.
What are the results of the change? Nothing good: “Research shows that the increase in working-age men not in the labor force is associated with profound social problems, from crime and political alienation to overdose deaths and suicide.”
The author discusses other issues caused by this massive influx (like the stunning cost to the average taxpayer), but in concluding his piece, he makes perhaps his most powerful argument: immigrants are no longer assimilating the way they used to. The “Melting Pot” that once made us a united nation seems to no longer be functioning:
Probably the most important reason to reduce immigration is to facilitate assimilation.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, himself the son of immigrants, said in 1915 that learning English and American customs is not enough.
He believed that “the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here.” He added that immigrants should be “brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations.”
Do any public figures today still believe this?
Many ordinary Americans are inclined toward Brandeis’s vision, but a huge fraction of our elites embraces identity-based politics, critical race theory and multiculturalism.
Exactly. And that is the problem.
Donald Trump and his administration put an almost immediate stop to the flow of illegals at the border, and his Border Czar Tom Homan along with ICE are busy repatriating bad actors at a fast pace. That doesn’t change the fact that the former president purposefully changed this country in a profound way, and not for the better.
We will be dealing with the fallout for an untold number of years, and that is one of the many reasons why I firmly believe that Joe Biden will go down as the single worst commander-in-chief in the nation’s history.
