If Donald Trump ends up back in the White House — which would make him the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1893 to serve two non-consecutive terms — his victory will be down to many factors.
A rose-tinted view of the economy under Trump before the pandemic struck.
The punishing inflation of the Biden years, which pillaged the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans every time they went to buy gas or groceries.
The inability of Kamala Harris – who was suddenly sprung on the American people once the Democratic elite decided to dump Joe Biden – to gel with voters or dispel the widespread notion that she was really a bit of a clunker.
But perhaps Trump will owe it most to one issue above all others: illegal immigration.
Six out of 10 Americans see immigration as ‘very important’ in deciding how they will vote, according to the Pew Research Center. Those most concerned about the issue overwhelmingly rate Trump as more likely to tackle it than Harris.
Illegal immigration — sometimes euphemistically referred to by liberals as ‘undocumented migration’ — is the most visible failure of the Biden-Harris years.
It is failure on a staggering scale.
US Border Patrol records ‘encounters’ with migrants who enter the country illegally or tried a legal route but were deemed inadmissible. Since Biden-Harris took office in January 2021, there have been a record 10m such encounters, the vast majority coming across the south-west land border with Mexico. During the Trump years there were 2.4 million such encounters.
Trump claims 21 million illegals have swarmed into America under Biden-Harris but has never provided a source for that figure. No matter. The official figures are bad enough.
Crucially, they don’t include those who’ve slipped into the country undetected, which adds at least another 1.5 million to the 10 million who are known about.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates 11 million illegal migrants were living in the US as of January 2022. That is likely to be an underestimate. The truth is nobody knows the real figure. Illegal migrants do not go around advertising their address.
America, of course, is famously a nation of immigrants. It will continue to welcome people in significant numbers from all over the world for the foreseeable future. But the national consensus is overwhelmingly for controlled immigration which is legal, orderly and in numbers the country can comfortably absorb.
There is widespread anger that America has lost control of its borders and needs to get a grip.
The issue is especially toxic for Harris. Biden put her in charge of tightening the southern border in the early days of the administration. It was something of a Hail Mary pass but she didn’t help herself: when asked months into her mission why she still hadn’t visited the southern border, she snippily replied that she hadn’t visited Europe either.
The truth is she achieved nothing as Biden’s ‘border tsar’. She even took to denying she ever had the job, though the record is clear that she did. As the 2024 election approached, the administration started issuing executive orders which toughened border controls. The numbers crossing illegally has dropped.
But that merely begs the question why such steps weren’t taken right from the start. The reason is revealing.
Biden-Harris presided over a lax immigration regime because they thought it would appeal to the millions of Hispanic and black voters which make up such a crucial part of the Democratic coalition. This only showed how out of touch they were.
Recent arrivals, who’ve waited patiently to enter the country legally and might now be struggling – in menial jobs on minimum wage – to provide for their families, are the ones most angered by a mass influx of illegals, because it is their jobs that are most at risk.
The ‘let ’em all in’ mob of well-heeled bloviators who dominate broadcasting in America have nothing to lose. Their jobs are not on the line. But those in unskilled jobs on low pay are right to be worried, because unscrupulous employers might well replace them with new migrants on even lower pay.
It is a major reason why Trump is winning more Hispanic and black votes — especially among men — than is normal for a Republican, a shift in voting habits which could well make the difference between victory or defeat for Trump.
A recent NBC/Telemundo poll showed support for Harris among Hispanics at 54 percent versus 40 percent for Trump. A 14-point lead might look impressive but at this stage in the 2020 campaign, Biden had a 36-point advantage among Hispanics.
Trump doesn’t need a majority of Hispanic votes to win – just enough to make the difference in the swing states which are so close that even the shift of just a couple of thousand votes could determine the result. Immigration could be just the issue which tilts matters Trump’s way by increasing his support among Hispanics and blacks.
MSNBC, the main broadcasting arm of the Democratic Party, was forced to confront this uncomfortable truth live on-air last week when numerous black and Hispanic voters in the swing state with the most electoral college votes, Pennsylvania, made it clear they were voting for Trump because they wanted a President who would take back control of the country’s borders.
Some complained of ‘illegal aliens‘ taking their jobs. Others wondered aloud about the point of a legal immigration process if millions could breach it with impunity. Some even backed Trump’s policy of mass deportation of illegals (even if that is unlikely ever to happen).
I suspect the MSNBC anchors are still in a state of shock.
There was a time when the mass influx of illegal migrants was largely an issue for hard-pressed border states. Until their governors, like Greg Abbott of Texas, came up with the ingenious idea of bussing the migrants to cities whose Democratic mayors had virtue-signaled they were ‘sanctuary’ cities who welcomed illegals migrants.
They soon changed their tune when tens of thousands were dumped in the center of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC and other cities. Soon the mayors were pleading with the border states to send no more because they were already full up. New York’s boasting about being a sanctuary cost it around $1.5 billion last year.
Moreover, people far from the border could now see the consequences of uncontrolled illegal migration on their own doorstep.
Texas alone has sent almost 120,000 migrants to sanctuary cities across the country, including 45,000 to New York. The political consequences have been immense, turning illegal immigration into a national issue.
Every morning, I pass the iconic Roosevelt Hotel, where I stayed when I first visited America in 1976, in midtown Manhattan. It closed during the pandemic and is now being used as a clearing center and hostelry for migrants. There is now an air of menace as men hang around aimlessly in huddles, the whole bloc is now a scene of urban squalor (on Madison Avenue!) and most of the shops in the vicinity are closed and boarded up.
It is only natural to feel sorry for the families sitting on the sidewalk with their suitcases, nowhere to go. But there is also a backlash of anger at those who allowed the uncontrolled immigration which has created these appalling conditions. As the campaign enters its final week Harris is still struggling to come up with convincing answers.
America is not alone in having an immigrant problem that is changing the face of politics. It is a trend across the democratic world.
It looks like ending the political career of Justin Trudeau, who has dominated Canadian politics for so long but whose personal ratings are now in the tank because of his open-door immigration policy. He’s suddenly become an advocate of controls but too late to save his skin. Canada’s Conservative Party looks set to win the win next election and Trudeau’s Liberal Party doesn’t even want him to run again.
It’s already contributed to the destruction of the British Conservative Party, who found themselves on the wrong end of a landslide in July – partly because, having promised Brexit would bring immigration under control, they proceeded to preside over the steepest rise in immigration ever.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s anti-migrant National Rally has replaced the mainstream center-right party, which now barely exists. In Italy the anti-immigration Giorgia Meloni is Prime Minister of the most right-wing government since the Second World War. In Germany the mainstream center-right Christian Democrats have retained their relevance only by tacking to the robust right on immigration.
There is no other issue with anything like the power to disrupt settled ways in democracies these days than immigration. And now it might be about to do the same in the country created by immigrants. It might still not be enough return Trump to power. But without it he’d probably have no chance of a second triumph.
