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All I care about is immigration. Am I happy that boorish, poorly dressed morons who don’t know the first thing about chesterton’s fence are now in power unraveling a century of American hegemony for no real reason? No, of course not. But this is only happening because the people who opened the gates and didn’t close them went against the will and welfare of the public for decades too long.
The immigration situation could have been resolved firmly in the mid to late 90s, when even California voted resoundingly for highly punitive measures against illegal migrants and at the height of Pat Buchanan’s popularity and the height of American prosperity and global power. Nobody listened. Now, the idiots are in power, and likely won’t even do anything substantive about the immigration issue, but the lesson for politicians is this - until the immigration situation is fixed, populists who promise to tear down institutions will keep getting elected, endlessly.
I won’t defend this administration, though I voted for Trump (not that my vote matters). But I will hold my nose and vote for the most-electorally-viable anti immigration candidate in every single race, in every single jurisdiction in which I can vote, forever until something is done, come what may.
I mean, he's not going to deport the 15 million people that Biden let in, but Trump has already mostly fixed the southern border. Transits are down over 90% (not sure on exact numbers but something like that).
And if the Trump administration arrests and deports a few hundred thousand criminals, that's an unalloyed good as well.
Finally we have the self-deportations that will occur, and probably already have occurred, due to the DOGE kneecapping the US spending that was funding illegal immigrations.
Net migration will almost certainly be negative during Trump's term. This is a dream if that's your #1 issue.
The Southern Border is hugely relevant. During the Biden wave there was an entire Cincinatti or St. Louis worth of people coming in every month.
No idea where you're getting that 85% stat, probably outdated data.
You said the southern border doesn't matter. But Biden let in something like 10-15 million illegals. If Harris had been elected she'd had let in a similar amount. Trump fixed this virtually overnight.
You're saying this doesn't matter because of legal immigration from an earlier era. I obviously disagree.
But, yeah, I do agree that legal immigration is also a big deal and will fundamentally reshape our country even ignoring the Southern Border. That will be harder to fix, but he's at least trying with birthright citizenship.
I'm not interested in betting because the numbers will almost certainly reflect people who gained permanent residence status, which is irrelevant. As far as I know, the government doesn't collect stats on people who repatriate that are not in the US legally, nor provide data on visa overstays, etc.. Who knows, maybe after Trump they will start.
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