“We let in too many people”
I was one of those people who ruined Thanksgiving in 2024. My sister invited a high-ranking staff member to the dinner table. The unfortunate guest had spent three years in the Biden-Harris White House and possessed specialized, inside-the-Beltway gossip about the chaotic last months of Biden’s presidency. I had to know everything.
With Kamala Harris’s 107-day campaign over, I asked him nearly everything. I wanted to know about Biden’s mental fitness, his disastrous debate performance, the pressure campaign by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi to push Biden out of the race, and how Harris managed to end her campaign deeply in debt despite dwarfing Donald Trump’s fundraising.
Finally, I asked him about immigration.“Well,” he said, “we let in too many people at the border.”
The unfortunate party guest revealed far more than he realized.
We, that is, a group of people that included him—let in—an active construction, implying agency rather than passively allowing so many people to come into the United States. Too many people—an admission that the number crossing the border was excessive, while leaving open the possibility that some smaller number would have been politically acceptable. And at the border—the nearly 2,000-mile boundary from the Rio Grande and Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, strained by extraordinary numbers of illegal crossings, asylum seekers, gotaways, smugglers, and traffickers.
The Biden administration chose policies that contributed to this chaos — but for what purpose? While Democrats generally defend immigration policies in humanitarian terms, I believe another motivation deserves more scrutiny: political calculation.
The admission that “we let too many people at the border” speaks to a broad political strategy by progressive Democrats.
Historically, the Democratic Party has benefited from large waves of immigrants coming to the United States and settling in cities such as New York and Chicago. Many arrived with little money, few resources, and little familiarity with American political customs. These factors made newcomers vulnerable to unscrupulous politicians who assembled them into voting blocs.
Local party bosses could cajole new voters into supporting the local political machine. Machine politicians, once elected, used their office for personal enrichment through government contracts and various forms of what George Washington Plunkitt called “honest graft.”
At the time, cities like New York lacked a modern welfare safety net. Local politicians from machines like Tammany Hall provided immigrants with employment, housing, medical care, and even coal money to warm their apartments during cold winters (Bill of Rights Institute, n.d.). Many immigrants, particularly Irish, became reliable Democratic voters. The arrangement blurred the line between genuine assistance and political patronage: Public benefits and favors helped cement political loyalty.
Politicians in higher office courted these party bosses. After all, the bosses controlled large numbers of votes needed to win elections in states such as New York and Illinois. Under such an arrangement, accountability among local, state, and federal governments can begin to break down. Local officials distribute benefits financed by taxpayers, whereas electoral offices at the state and federal level ignore the problem since it helps them stay in office. The likelihood of fraud increases and accountability diminishes thanks to a political strategy at odds with good government and the principles of federalism.
As Democrats have lost portions of older constituencies—white working-class men, for instance—they have increasingly sought support among newer and more diverse constituencies. Immigration can affect that political landscape even before an immigrant becomes a voter.
According to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of the 2020 census, the presence of immigrants (legal and illegal) produced a net gain of 14 House seats for Democratic-leaning states relative to a no-immigration scenario (Camarota & Zeigler, 2024).
Large-scale immigration also creates demand for government services as newcomers adjust to life in the United States. Over time, immigrants who become citizens also become voters, giving political parties an incentive to compete for their loyalty. California’s decision to extend Medi-Cal coverage to income-eligible undocumented immigrants is a prime example of the expansion of state-funded services.
The fear among many is that the country will turn blue as Democrats carry out this strategy. California was once a Republican-leaning state but became a Democratic stronghold in the decades after the federal government offered amnesty to millions of immigrants in 1986.
Consider the example of Minnesota, too, where some leaders in the Somali community are accused of orchestrating fraud schemes involving billions of dollars in government programs. Then there is New Jersey, where a state investigation found that software error had improperly registered approximately 6,600 noncitizens to vote. New Jersey officials reported that roughly 400 of those registrants cast ballots before the error was corrected.
Examples such as these are only the tip of the iceberg if the Democratic Socialists of America keep winning elections. The DSA has already advocated citizenship for illegal immigrants, along with higher taxes to fund universal health care, free college, and the Green New Deal.
New York’s Zohran Mamdani won his mayoral race while campaigning on an unapologetically progressive agenda in a city where nearly 40% of NYC’s population is foreign-born.
His success should encourage opponents of permissive immigration policies to rethink how they frame the debate.
Consider how immigration debates revolve around being “pro” or “anti.” Opponents sometimes focus on the characteristics of people, places or cultures and ask whether newcomers share American values or possess the capacity to assimilate. Assimilation then becomes the litmus test for whether immigration itself is good or bad.
But another way to frame the debate is to ask, Cui bono? Who benefits?
Who benefits from unbelievably high rates of immigration?
That question shifts attention away from immigrants themselves and toward the incentives facing the political class.
During the Biden administration, millions of immigrants undertook dangerous journeys through places like the Darién Gap or the Sonoran Desert, often placing themselves in the hands of smugglers and traffickers. Many that made it to the U.S. sought asylum, and some were flown to blue cities. There they received access to government services, providing an added level of encouragement for additional migrants. Mayors of blue cities then refused to enforce federal immigration law, citing humanitarian concerns. Critics saw something else: political leaders expanding government programs while simultaneously building relationships with constituencies that could eventually become an important part of their electoral coalition.
President Trump exposed this strategy at the State of the Union, asking members of Congress to stand if they believed the following:
“The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
Not a single Democrat stood—perhaps because of opposition to Trump, or perhaps out of recognition that illegal immigration really is their best means of staying in office.
The deeper threat, however, is not immigration itself. The threat is political ambition unchecked by accountability—ambitious politicians encouraging unrestrained immigration and exploiting vulnerable populations for political advantage.
Alexander Hamilton warned about this danger in the very first of The Federalist. In Federalist No. 1, Hamilton writes: “It will be equally forgotten…that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people…those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”
Progressive politicians may sincerely cite humanitarian concerns. But humanitarian motives and political self-interest are not mutually exclusive. Citizens are entitled to ask whether electoral incentives also shape policies that increase immigration, expand government programs and reshape political coalitions.
Ordinary citizens have little recourse the longer this strategy is continues. Elected officials are accountable to their voters, but if politicians rely on a large, diverse group of immigrants, with little knowledge or scant interest in American political traditions, that accountability disappears. Without such a “general knowledge” among the people, to quote John Adams, “liberty cannot be preserved” among any group of citizens in the American republic.
If we continue focusing only on the benefits and drawbacks of immigration, we may find ourselves missing the larger political question.
And once we begin asking that question, we may discover that the most important actors in the immigration debate are not the people crossing the border, but the politicians standing on the other side of it.
Winston Brady is director of curriculum at Thales Press.
