By George F. Will | George F. Will is a columnist for the Washington Post.
Today's coagulated politics is nullifying the most dramatic achievement of Donald Trump's second term, the restoration of order along the southern border. This has created the prerequisite for policies that could improve the nation's dynamism, and its understanding of itself. Yet neither political party will seize the moment for immigration reform, thereby risking the wrath that envelops those guilty of seeming accommodating.
More than the inflation Joe Biden's policies ignited, even more than the senescence he could not palliate, uncontrolled immigration upended his presidency. Control of borders is a core attribute of national sovereignty. The Biden administration's abdication of this responsibility sent a radiating, demoralizing message of indifference and incompetence: The government was unable -- worse, unwilling -- to create the prerequisite for all other social goods: civic order.
This choice was prefigured. On June 27, 2019, in a candidates debate, 10 Democratic contenders for their party's presidential nomination were asked to raise their hands if they favored decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings. Eight, including Biden, did.
During his presidency, net migration averaged 2.6 million (approximately equal to the population of the nation's 24th largest metropolitan area, San Antonio) every year, for a four-year total of 10.4 million, slightly more than Michigan's population. Hence the seismic effect on public opinion: According to Gallup, in 2020-2024 the percentage of Americans favoring less immigration soared from 28 to 55. On election night 2024, progressives learned the perils of dismissing this as racism and xenophobia.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute found that in Biden's first 100 days, he took 94 executive actions pertaining to immigration. Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam, writing for the Free Press, says these repudiated not only Trump's approach but "long-standing immigration limits that had been embraced by the Clinton and Obama administrations."
Salam says public opinion on immigration often is "thermostatic," moving against excesses of those in power. Perhaps a national recoil against the ugliness of the Trump administration's militarized measures against unauthorized immigrants -- many of whom have been here more than 10 years -- will allow reframing the immigration debate.
The fear on the right, Salam says, has been that immigration means not a Great Renewal of national dynamism but a Great Replacement of native-born Americans. This should have been assuaged by Trump's "massive gains among naturalized citizens and second-generation Americans in 2020 and 2024." So, to the discomfort of some of Trump's aides and many of his supporters, and perhaps even Trump, he might have unintentionally made reform more palatable. According to a 2024 Pew Research Center poll, 70% of Americans, including 55% of Trump supporters, favor "admitting immigrants who can fill labor shortages."
U.S. population growth is lower than ever, migration is net negative for the first time ever -- and life expectancy is projected to increase from today's 78.4 to 80.4 years. The two entitlements (Social Security, Medicare) primarily responsible for the normalization of, soon, $2 trillion annual budget deficits depend on the workforce's growth, which now depends entirely on immigration.
Economic facts are not static like the Rocky Mountains. They change with economic dynamism, and immigration energizes. Conservatives correctly insist on "dynamic scoring" of tax cuts -- projecting positive revenue effects from tax cuts that incentivize productive behavioral changes. Such conservatives should also favor the dynamic scoring of immigration's economic effects.
One of which is: Immigrants who fill jobs as domestic helpers, cleaners, waiters, car-wash attendants, meatpackers and other low-skill jobs drive productivity and social dynamism by allowing, even compelling, other workers to advance to more-skilled work. In 2023 House testimony, the Cato Institute's David J. Bier noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that most jobs created in this decade will not require a college degree.
Regarding America's sagging birth rate, research finds that low-skill immigrants (nannies, housekeepers, meal-preparers) "substantially" reduce hesitation about having children. Today's housing shortage? Bier: "Thanks to too few workers, it now takes about eight months to build a new home, which is up from four to six months" before 2020.
Three economists, writing for the American Enterprise Institute, have estimated that net U.S. migration might be negative this year -- for the first time in history -- by more than 200,000. Most economists think the question is not whether but how much this will subtract from economic growth.
Choosing not to act is a choice, as is the decline of a nation with America's human resources. Decline is today's grim and only bipartisanship.