On Thursday, President Donald Trump said his administration will “work with [illegal immigrants who self deport] right from the beginning on trying to get them back in legally.” While that may sound like a clever strategy to encourage self-deportation, it misses the bigger picture — and sends the wrong message.
“We’re going to work with people so that if they go out in a nice way and back to their country, we’re gonna work with them right from the beginning on trying to get them back in legally … So it gives a real incentive, otherwise, they’ll never come back. They’ll will never be allowed once a certain period of time goes by,” Trump said.
Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem also said in a statement that illegal aliens who self-deport “may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream.”
Such statements completely undermine the seriousness of violating our immigration laws and insult every single American. Allowing aliens who broke the law to have a second chance at coming to the U.S. legally is like rewarding someone who broke into your home by handing them the front door key. That’s not the message Trump and Noem should be sending.
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Trump and Noem’s comments also miss the bigger picture: No one is entitled to the American Dream just because they want it. The American Dream isn’t a participation trophy, it’s not a global entitlement. It belongs to the American people — and it can only survive if the country that created it survives.
But America cannot survive mass migration, no matter how “legal” it is.
Mass migration — whether legal or illegal — especially at the scale we saw under Biden, is a cultural wrecking ball. It’s not that America doesn’t want to welcome some newcomers — but without assimilation, there is no America. And assimilation to the necessary degree cannot occur when migration is happening en masse — even if some self-deport and come back “legally.”
America is a nation founded on specific principles and traditions as well as a shared language and culture. Our national identity is rooted in these concrete things. When you allow waves of foreign nationals to enter en masse, you don’t strengthen the American Dream — you bury it. You destroy the very culture and way of life that new arrivals are supposed to join. Migrants don’t become American — they turn America into a patchwork of unassimilated foreign enclaves.
Mass migration saturates communities and destabilizes our national identity, whereas slow and limited migration allows migrants to assimilate into American culture. Such assimilation is required for the preservation of the nation. Alexander Hamilton said as much in 1802:
“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”
Thomas Jefferson said in 1776 that while he was “for extending the right of suffrage (or in other words the right of a citizen) to all who had a permanent intention of living in the country … Whoever intends to live in a country must wish that country well, and has a natural right of assisting in the preservation of it.”
Allowing illegal aliens a second shot at coming here legally disregards not only their contempt for our customs and laws, but also fails to recognize that America is not the homeless shelter for the immigrants of the world simply because they want to have their shot at the “American Dream.”
The American Dream is for Americans, plain and simple. But that American Dream will cease to exist if we lose America. And if we allow mass migration without the strict requirement for complete and total assimilation, we lose America.
What exactly changes if the millions of Biden-era illegals suddenly self-deport and then line up to re-enter legally? Are they suddenly going to embrace our culture, our language, our values simply because the government handed over a sheet of paper saying ‘You’re legal’?
Likely not. They didn’t do it for the years they’ve been here. And why would they? In the Big Apple, for example, thousands of illegal aliens have settled amongst other illegal aliens who also never assimilated into American culture, and who don’t seem to have any desire to. Ignoring such a reality “produces misery in a nation,” as my colleague John Daniel Davidson wrote in these pages.
“If you want to see what an immigration policy that rejects these realities produces, look at what has happened to Western Europe over the last decade.,” Davidson wrote, “Millions of unassimilated migrants from Africa and the Middle East have taken up residence in cities and communities across Europe. It has produced chaos, social disintegration, and lawlessness.”
Trump and Noem’s underlying suggestion that mass migration is OK so long as it is done legally is a dangerous delusion. That’s not how you Make America Great Again. It’s how you lose America altogether.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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