Victor Davis Hanson: We Need to Stop Letting In Ungrateful Immigrants

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome to the Daily Signal Podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
This episode is brought to you by Facebook.
So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you've been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook.

**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:38)
All Americans support legal immigration, especially legal immigration that is diverse, measured in numbers that can be assimilated, and acculturated, and integrated, and meritocratic, so we get people who come here with skills that ensure that we, the people of the United States, will not have to support them. But from time to time, that hasn't happened. And when you have that combined with illegal immigration, you have a pool of 30 million illegal and legal immigrants, and 53 million people who were not born in the United States. People lose their support for immigration.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
All Americans support legal immigration, especially legal immigration that is diverse, as I said, measured in numbers. It can be assimilated and acculturated and integrated, meritocratic. So we get people who come here with skills that ensure that we, the people of the United States will not have to support them. And they have some knowledge of the traditions and customs and protocol of the United States, as well as English fluency. But from time to time, that hasn't happened. And when you have that combined with illegal immigration, as we did under the Biden administration, when 12 million people came in, sometimes it rates 10,000 a day, plus over a million and a half legal immigrants, then you have a pool of 30 million illegal and legal immigrants, and 53 million people who were not born in the United States. So then people lose their support for immigration. It happened in the early 20th century, you say from about 1900 to 1910 About 1.5 percent of the population, one million people, half a million some years, but some years, a whole million, came into the United States from southern and eastern Europe. And they had very different ideas about politics. Many of them were anarchists. They joined unions and anarchists. We remember had killed William McKinley. He was an American-born anarchist. But there was a lot of worry that immigration at that level of one and a half percent of the population every year from people who were not integrating but had radical ideas about changing America was dangerous. And it lost public support for years. The same thing is happening, as I said, now, because of the numbers, but also because we're seeing a new type of immigrant. Usually we say the immigrant is good for America because he's eager to get here. He's eager to work hard. He loves the United States. He studied the United States. He wants to leave his homeland and start anew. And then he makes us say, wow, look at that energized immigrant that loves this country. We've got to snap out of it and compete. That was the idea of immigration, one of the ideas. Not now. We're getting a lot of immigrants that are coming from failed states, mostly as a result of communism and socialism. Some of them come legally, some come illegally. And they're coming in numbers that we can't fully assimilate. But there's a new type of legal immigrant. And these are immigrants from the first generation, or they're children in the second generation from failed states. So let me ask you a question. What do Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat of Michigan, or Ilhan Omar, a Democratic representative from Minnesota, whose family came from Somalia, Rashida Tlaib was from the West Bank, or AOC, whose father came from Puerto Rico, who was also a Democratic Congresswoman, or the podcaster Hasan Piker, who's from a multimillion-dollar family in Turkey and was born here and then returned to Turkey, or New York Mayor Zoran Mandami, who came here from Uganda, or Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, who came from Egypt, his family did, or Melat Kuros, whose family and she came from Ethiopia, or Representative Ro Khanna, a representative congressman from California, whose family and his wife's family came from India, second generation, or Gustavo Gordillo, who is a first-generation immigrant from Peru. And I could go on, but that should be enough. What do they all have in common? Let's count them. Number one, most of them are pretty wealthy.