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How the Migrant Crisis Destroyed American Liberalism

Posted on Wednesday, January 17, 2024
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by Walter Samuel
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AMAC Exclusive – By Walter Samuel

migrant Asylum Seekers

On January 9, students at James Madison High School in Brooklyn discovered that they would be spending the next two days in front of their computer screens learning from home. But it wasn’t the usual winter weather causing this cancellation of in-person classes – instead, it was because the city of New York was planning to move nearly 2,000 illegal migrants from their encampment and resettle them at the school, displacing the students.

The move prompted understandable outrage from parents and recriminations from local officials who pleaded helplessness. What were they supposed to do? Allow the migrants to freeze to death in the coming storm? In a single cold evening in New York City, one example illustrated the bankruptcy of two decades of liberal discourse on immigration.

When history is written, the decision of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who was widely mocked by the mainstream media when he announced it in 2021, to bus migrants from the border into blue-state sanctuary cities may be remembered as one of the most momentous in modern history. It was definitely among the most politically clever.

Over nearly three years, Abbott’s decision effectively nationalized the costs of an issue that had previously only produced localized winners and losers – border state residents paid the costs of mass illegal migration while blue state residents far from the border enjoyed cheap labor and the chance to be morally righteous.

For all Democrats like to talk about redistribution of resources and “privilege,” the bussing of migrants was the most successful redistributive policy in recent memory – one which has left Democrats with no answer.

One reason it succeeded was because it played on the class divisions that define American politics.

Modern American liberalism is less a collection of policy positions based on a worldview than an effort by individuals to demonstrate their own social status through demonstrating contempt toward those beneath them. Critics of the shift away from the basics of math, science, and reading, toward DEI and weird sexual education curricula in schools often miss that, for liberals, sending one’s children to a school that teaches gibberish rather than reading, writing, and arithmetic is in effect a method of demonstrating that your family is connected enough to ensure that your children can secure college admission and employment without the need to learn real skills.

That is why the inability of those graduates to secure employment or repay student loans is such an issue for Biden’s base. The ability to take useless degrees and succeed is intrinsic to their identity.

Immigration took on a similar tone. The ability to make high-minded moral proclamations such as “no human is illegal,” “walls are racist,” or “borders are illegitimate” advertised that those making such claims had the economic clout to build their own domestic walls to keep the consequences of their own ideology out of their communities.

“Well, I have never had a problem with migrants,” the liberal from suburban Boston would say, before noting how much harder Ecuadorians worked on their vacation home renovation than local Americans who were probably addicted to opioids. The ability to prioritize foreign illegal migrants over native workers implied that liberals were above both and in a position to pass judgment upon them. Support for open borders became a way to punish working-class Americans for failing to show adequate deference to their “betters.”

The policy of bussing migrants to sanctuary communities in blue states cleverly destroyed the basis of this ideological worldview. This was not merely by causing liberals to feel the pain in their communities – that was an element, and an effective one at that, but the assault went deeper.

Many upscale liberals define themselves by their distance from issues. Their sense of class identity was defined by the fact that there were no migrants or homeless people in their communities. They had paid housing premiums to move into leafy suburbs with no migrants, and now the presence of migrants and the problems of crime, littering, and safety they brought punctured those bubbles.

At its root, the upscale liberal dream has always been about control. If migrants are going to be hosted in a town or school, it is because local parents have decided to bring in a dozen Somali refugees and settle them in the local church, not because migrants showed up and had to be housed. If schools are going to hold anti-racist training, it is because parents decided to so they could explain to friends at work what they were doing to combat “systemic racism,” not because gang warfare was breaking out at their children’s schools.

In short, the nature of high-income American liberalism is that every problem must have an on-off switch, at which point turning the problem on becomes a sign of power over less fortunate Americans, while the ability to turn it off ensures that progressive politics remains an extracurricular activity.

The crisis of American liberalism in 2024 when it comes to the migrant crisis is that the off switch is broken. Brooklyn parents are liberal, and there may well have been some who in other circumstances would have happily taken the woke points from agreeing to allow a few dozen migrant families to stay in their high school’s gym over a vacation – provided, of course, they were out well before students returned to classes, and with enough time to fully clean the premises.

What happened at James Madison High School, however, was different. New York officials did not choose to act. They were forced to do so. The migrants were rehoused in the middle of a school week with little notice, parents who may well have had important work-related meetings were forced to scramble to accommodate, and kids were forced home. They had lost control.

If one listens to the rising criticism of Biden from the left, that is voters’ real qualm – that Biden has lost all control over a crisis he created. This is the true genius of the move by Abbott and other Republicans. They have realized that the most critical issue for millions of otherwise liberal Americans is the question of control and ensured that the only way they can regain control of their own lives and communities is by bringing the border under control.

If thousands of migrants are present in camps, they cannot be allowed to freeze or starve, which means the weather can force the hand of the local government. As long as red states continue to send migrants, those states and not local blue state authorities control the tempo of the crisis.

This is also why politicians such as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and New York Mayor Eric Adams have alternately denounced Abbott, threatened to sue him, and tried to ban arrivals. They know that he is in control of the crisis in their communities. They also know they are impotent, a tone that was evident when Johnson went so far as to accuse Abbott of deliberately trying to oust “mayors of color.”

Johnson is correct on one thing: Abbott has successfully undermined him by reorienting American politics around an issue for which liberalism has no answer, and the Democratic Party, as long as it remains committed to that 21st-century version of liberalism, cannot resolve.

The border is far from under control, but in one sense, liberals have already lost. Control has become the dominant issue in American politics, and that is not an environment in which modern liberalism, as we have known it for the last decade, can function.

Biden, who was elected to make liberals’ position in society secure, cannot deliver the social security that they need to exist. This contradiction explains the demoralization of his “base” and the sense of despondence among even the most committed partisans who see no future even if he somehow survives.

They know that their project is dead, killed by a collision with the reality of mass illegal migration.

Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.

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Robert
Robert
8 months ago

Amazing we are now seeing polio, tuberculosis, measles and other diseases that were eradicated in the USA starting to get a foothold here. All from the illegals. My daughter teaches in a district that has one school loaded with children here illegally and there are problems with intestinal parasites affecting the students. You don’t hear that on the news. I have been in the back areas of Mexico and Central America and see that these people live in stick huts with dirt floors, no running water, no sanitation, etc. Goats and chickens walking around the living quarters. Bathroom is just pulling your pants down around the hut. No soap, hygiene, just go on. These are the kids in our schools now who are spreading disease and germs for they never used a toilet or washed their hands. I’m just sick of all these unskilled criminal illegals and pray they will eventually be deported!

Rod
Rod
8 months ago

Mind-blowing to me that this entire mess was created by the Biden administration and they have the audacity to blame the Republicans ! Just one of multiple bad decisions by these clowns ! Wake up America !

Honey
Honey
8 months ago

I love this article.
Liberals enjoy looking down their noses at people who did things two hundred years ago that they would NEVER do. Ha.
Sanctuary cities allowed liberals to feel superior. When real illegals were sent to them in big numbers their noble ideals were tested. Ha.
I hope more conservatives can come up with in your face tests like Abbott did. Ha and ha.

TPS
TPS
8 months ago

Getting what you voted for and now finding out you don’t want this. Hmmm IMO

PaulE
PaulE
8 months ago

Two things:

1) The author assumes that when history is written that it will portray events accurately. That is of a course not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination. If the left wins, history will be portrayed in the distorted fashion that it currently is in most history books written by the left over the last 40 years. The facts will be discarded in order to support the left narrative as they see fit. History being accurately portrayed will only occur if the left is removed from power and their ideology crushed. Anything short of that makes how history is written in the future a coin toss dependent on which side wins.

2) “Progressivism” as the Democrats call it or more accurately socialism / Marxism requires the current system be completely overwhelmed in all areas of society and allowed to collapse under the stress imposed upon it. All so that socialism / Marxism can rise from the ashes as the solution or salvation of the masses. Depending on the audience being addressed to sell the ideology at any moment in time. The mass importation of millions upon millions of illegal aliens, with little to no real value add to this country but assured of being a constant and permanent drain on multiple resources (shelter, food, money, schools, heath care system, etc., is merely one of the many mechanisms being used by the left to overtax the societal system in order to bring about its collapse and eventual replacement in the form of “a new normal” for the United States.

The author gets lost in the minutia of the methodology being deployed by the left, instead of simply standing back and looking at the strategic objectives of why the left is using these events to bring about their desired changes to their benefit. Unfortunately, another miss by this author. That is the problem with many in academia. Most lack any real-world experience to discern the root cause of why certain things are occurring and thus can’t provide any workable solutions. They just endlessly restate the problem over and over again. That does no one any good in terms of correcting the larger problem of the left intentionally undermining the country from within.

Melinda
Melinda
8 months ago

Many people I know, including relatives, are liberals. They are not well off financially, but cling to the liberal ideology because they’re “democrats” and have to follow the party line and believe what the MSM tells them. Not much thinking going on there.

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
8 months ago

Lie: the border is secure.
Lie: the border patrol whipped migrants.
Lie: children in cages.
Lie: the border is more secure now then under Trump.
Lie: sanctuary cities welcome migrants.
Lie: Democrats sent a border bill up the first day.
Lie: Texas National Guard blocked rescue of a migrant woman and her children.
Lie: the Biden Administration is working hard to solve the border problem.
Lie: [insert latest here]

Liz
Liz
8 months ago

Send all this crap to sanctuary cities–they deserve it!Let them ENJOY the effects with NO HELP!!!!!!!

Edyth A. Meredith
Edyth A. Meredith
8 months ago

There are no border U.S. states any more. Welcome to Biden land.

Helen Ryley R Cobean
Helen Ryley R Cobean
8 months ago

WOW! How perceptive and thanks to Governer Abbott!!! Is there any way we can help exacerbate the problem for Democrats further?

BEA
BEA
8 months ago

No country on earth ignores their borders. Our politicians are the worst; how could they let so many people enter our country. What drugs, diseases, attitudes, illness, etc. are they bringing to us?

uncleferd
uncleferd
8 months ago

It was a plot of such ill will towards conservative states, that the euphoric, liberal establishment never thought for a monent that it could possibly backfire on them.
Of course, the presence of so many millions of illegal aliens, including the many who will never adjust to modern life in America, will certainly backfire on ALL of US… with devastating results.

Felix
Felix
8 months ago

I remember January 20 2021 watching Joe Biden signing a stack of executive orders reversing everything Trump imposed to control illegal immigration, why aren’t the Republicans not reminding the people of why our borders are now controlled by the cartels?

Steven
Steven
8 months ago

As someone who lives in a very Blue State, Maryland, I have seen first hand how the border crisis has affected our one Party State. The liberal politicians here continue to push this dangerous agenda. Our schools, hospitals and every resource in the state are over burdened with the results of the illegal immigrants coming into this state. Crime has increased dramatically as have health related issues. The Democrat Party which is made up of every oddball minority has reached the point where they can no longer control the reality of their failed agenda. This is why they fear Donald Trump and his populist “America First” agenda.

Louise R
Louise R
8 months ago

This is excellent. I have not seen the situation summarized like this. Perfect!

Paul
Paul
8 months ago

Don’t forget small pox is on the rise.
This is because,Joe Biden believes in open borders.
Sanctuary cities are being inundated with illegals.
Let’s go Brandon!

teresa
teresa
8 months ago

this plight that illegals are human, is not the problem, they are here illegally and unlawfully!!!! if they weren’t here no one would have to say they are human, or that others are racists etc. no we are realist. they are not vetted, have diseases, do drugs, steal, rape, kill – YES THEY DO!!! They are using our resources, water, etc. we pay with our taxes to feed, medical, speak to them in spanish or whatever using an interpretor – is this fair to Americans. biden is a buffoon and needs to go like now! he is a danger and drain on this country as are his voters.. he lies and cheats YES HE DOES! so sick of it

Thinking
Thinking
8 months ago

The liberals are high and mighty with their sanctuary cities and states, till the border was thrown open by sloppy Joe. All of a sudden they all were NIMBYs. When sloppy threw open the border he had no plan what to do with the millions of people that came in. NONE He expected the border states to deal with it. Wrong Joe, this is a countrywide problem. We all know why he did it, to make the border states blue states. But Abbott and DeSantis by sending the migrants to sanctuary cities and states, was calling on the liberals to follow up on their promise to take care of these migrants. Only we found out pretty quick when 50 migrants showed up in Martha’s Vineyard, a sanctuary town, they were not welcome. They called these governors names, accused them of kidnapping the migrants to prove a point. But the migrants didn’t stay. Although there was plenty of empty hotels at that time of year. No no quick bus them to a naval ship yard. Get them out of here. No word from sloppy Joe to comply with the status of sanctuary city. No only calling out DeSantis with Abbott of meanness. Excuse me this migrant chaos at the southern and northern border is a nation wide problem. Sloppy Joe to this day has no plan where to house them, where to educate them when they get a court hearing besides 10 years from now. He doesn’t even know who they are because many throw their passports away. Or walk across the border like getaways. Millions of them. When you have 3,000 people coming across in one day who are contacted by border patrol, how many are getting away that day? How many terrorists? Does sloppy even care? Do the liberals care? Are these getaways becoming Joe’s army? He never speaks about them because in his mind there is no problem at the border. Just in sanctuary cities where the liberals don’t want them.

James DeBona
James DeBona
8 months ago

The damage is most certainly already done!
Now, I’m hoping to God that when (not if) Trump gets elected in November, we enact the largest deportation operation in the history of our republic!
It’s been done many times in the past, not to this large of a scale, but it has been done. They can call it “operation immigration clean sweep” if they like, as long as it happens and it gets done.

Coach Terry
Coach Terry
8 months ago

Excellent exposure of the Godless Roman1 demoncRATic rhetoric n wrecklessness that is poisonous and proliferated by a libtard narrating media that is critically harming the Republic.

FrankR
FrankR
8 months ago

Remember when Obama said, “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America”? Well, here we are.

Fred Noel
Fred Noel
8 months ago

Illegal aliens first.American citizens last!
I believe that the damage that Biden and his Administration has done, can never be repaired in my life time, or my children’s life time. It’s unbelievable the damage that has been done to America in three years.
I can only imagine how much worse it could have been if the Democrats also controlled the Congress as well as the Senate.

Mimi
Mimi
8 months ago

Instead of housing the migrants in schools, why not invite them into the nice warm county administrative offices. Have their staff work from home on their computers, and let the kids go to school. Of course that would require common sense, and we all know liberals got rid of that years ago!! Wouldn’t want to inconvenience the mayor and his staff. Besides, I’m sure the teachers unions would love to give their staff a teaching vacation where they can do their jobs remotely at full pay. Maybe even give them a bonus for having to teach school in their bathrobes! Abbot’s no dummy, his conservative common sense told him exactly what to do. Send the illegals to the guys making speeches about how great they are. Now their speeches are about suing the guys making them deal with the mess that they created, and they don’t like it one bit!

Granny26
Granny26
8 months ago

Just load them all up and deport them back across the border….preferably way below the border. No matter if they are in blue or red cities, we are ALL paying the bill for them being here. Just close the damn border and when they do come over, just send them back.

Irv C
Irv C
8 months ago

Great article. I think Abbot played the perfect hand too and let’s hope people wake up to this problem the biden and his left regime have created.

John
John
8 months ago

The Socialist Democrats have destroyed our country! I am sick of them, they lie cheat and steal!

Gabe Hanzeli kent wa
Gabe Hanzeli kent wa
8 months ago

We can start by saying the democrat created illegal alien crisis has shown that every single aspect of the left is a lie. the fake claim of “we need a new immigration police” “sanctuary cities and states” “helping the needy” “say thank you to a vet” and on and on. all of it has been lies since the inception of each slogan.

DenvilleSr
DenvilleSr
8 months ago

New York City has long had a “right to shelter” law which requires the city to provide shelter to any homeless person requesting it. It was never anticipated that the law would apply to illegal aliens, but the language of the law means any homeless person is entitled to shelter. The recent cold temperatures (lower 20s last night) means that living on the streets is not possible. The mayor couldn’t have people freezing to death on the street. All of a sudden, liberal New Yorkers are outraged at turning a school into a shelter. Before this, the outrage was over Governor Abbot conducting a political stunt. We can thank the good governor for sharing a small portion of the problem his state has been enduring with some of those most in support of open borders, DEI, validating the creation of a multitude of genders and pronoun choices and using the combined forces of government, the press and social media to decide which facts are information, disinformation or misinformation. We need a voting “revolution” – at the ballot box in November.

Scott R L
Scott R L
8 months ago

I find it hilarious that some Chicago suburbs are virtue-signaling by “welcoming” the illegals being sent through their towns…as long as the illegals get back on the bus and keep going.
Liberalism in a nutshell.

teresa
teresa
8 months ago

TRUMP IS A GOD SEND – biden and the left are dead ends!!!!!

CLIFFORD F GERACI
CLIFFORD F GERACI
8 months ago

Liberalism is a mental disease and will be the destruction of America as we know it. These past 4 years of Progressive Socio fascist Democratic control will have very lasting repercussions.

Rosemary Loven
Rosemary Loven
8 months ago

Surprised there are no other responses to this excellent article. Headline might have been Hoisted on Their Own Petard.

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
8 months ago

Overwhealm the cities alone & then add Crime & HC issues

Morbious
Morbious
8 months ago

The project of liberalism dead? Are you kidding? This is like declaring that Germany had lost the war after the brits evacuated dunkirk. Amac members must like these positive thinking articles cause we sure get a lot of em.

Jeri
Jeri
8 months ago

Liberal choices do indeed have consequences.

The Money Tree
The Money Tree
8 months ago

Of the many counterproductive and ill-thought-through that liberals have come up with, the first being the great society and then leading into this nonsense. Let’s see, so you invite anybody and everybody with supposedly no care or concern for who they are or where they’re from or even if they mean to do harm. So now your invitees are filling the schools, committing crimes in neighborhoods, costing the citizens billions upon billions of dollars and crowding out native born Americans in their own communities…that’ll work.

Randall L. Beatty
Randall L. Beatty
8 months ago

The only reason why Biden and the rest of the dummies in Washington do not care about all the illegals is that every blue state will take them in as long as taxpayers pay there way there will be more health problems here because these people have never been checked for health problems the Dems just put them on airplanes and shipped them all over this country I do not blame Texas for putting them on a bus and shipping them to blue states since they want them then they get mad because they are there. Biden and others that allow this would bankrupt this country because it will cost millions to take care of them if not billions and most will never want to be citizen of this country but all that this country has to offer not to mention all the people that will die of drug overdoses from drugs coming into this country the cartels love what is going on open border there gateway to the United States.

james carlyle
james carlyle
8 months ago

I prefer the 18th century definition of Liberalism and still believe in its virtue.

Wayne
Wayne
8 months ago

Don’t call them migrants. They are criminal invaders!

caseyp
caseyp
8 months ago

I don’t think the crisis has destroyed Liberalism. There are way too many people that will stick with Liberals no matter what. They are uninformed and just don’t care. They will vote for Liberals no matter how bad their lives are.

CountryBoy
CountryBoy
8 months ago

I wish that everyone would STOP calling today’s democrats “liberals”….. there is NOTHING “liberal” about them…. Today’s democrats are Progressive Marxist Statists…. LOOK at their policies…
Classical Liberalism……. What MOST Democrats USED-TO-BE……
.
Ralph Raico once said, “Liberalism . . . is based on the conception of civil society as by and large self-regulating when its members are free to act within the very wide bounds of their individual rights. Among these, the right to private property, including freedom of contract and exchange and the free disposition of one’s own labor, is given a high priority. Historically, liberalism has manifested a hostility to state action, which, it insists, should be reduced to a minimum.” American Conservatives today subscribe to these notions of Classical Liberalism, and it USED-TO-BE true that Democrats also believed in them, but NOT any more. Today, there are less than a handful of Democrats in Congress that subscribe to Classical Liberalism and they do so at their own risk.
.
But, since Barack Obama purged the American Left of Classical Liberals, this is no longer so. Obama fulfilled his Pledge of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” by eliminating the Classical Liberals in the Democrat Party by taking Hard-Left Political Positions on most issues; this ensured increasing levels of defeat for liberal Democrats at the polls?—?leaving behind Statist Progressives?—?in every election year, from 2010 to the present. In 2017, we find a record number of Republican-controlled legislative chambers and Governorships nationwide, not to speak of the US Senate, the House of Representatives, and the US Presidency.

Craig Purcell
Craig Purcell
8 months ago

With 2 trillion dollar per year deficit spending how can we afford to take care of 300,000 migrants per month ?

Nick E Farnsworth Sr.
Nick E Farnsworth Sr.
8 months ago

I’ve learned more from 1 article. Than I’ve learned in the past year. Thank You.I’m renewing my membership. Feb. 2024I’m real busy now. Hope we get to talk more later.Thanks for helping bring AMERICA BACK

Kat
Kat
8 months ago

Great article, but I disagree about the laborer issue. I think the influx of illegal alien/migrant workers degraded the work standard that Americans had been taught and they had no choice but to cheapen their own work too, so they could compete wouldn’t be outbid. Remember that a person can work hard at doing sloppy work or they can work hard at doing correct work. Sloppy work is the norm now, at least in my long-time Democrat run state and maybe it’s driven those who know it’s not right or good, to drink (or opioids). Personally, it’s caused me physical illness, when a job was not done correctly.

TheHalfrican
TheHalfrican
8 months ago

Spot on Walter, Abbott needs to start a GoFundMe for more buses & drivers, the donations will pour in.

BlueCityBlues
BlueCityBlues
8 months ago

I live in San Diego. In the 90s they were given everything. Driver’s Licenses, lenient school admissions, free expensive medical care. You name it. The NGOs have raked in unbelievable profits and should all be fined, but the government pays them! If you objected, you were heartless and privileged. So I asked our coworker why do Hispanics vote Blue? Her deadpan answer: “They live free S**t.” Nothing is free. The incredible strain and comprehensive problems the drag in from Mexico is real. Also, Mexico laughs when an American goes there and wants free goodies. It’s a one way ticket.

LAWRENCE
LAWRENCE
8 months ago

“What were they supposed to do? Allow the migrants to freeze to death in the coming storm?”
Awww I hear it ain’t so bad…ya just kinda fall asleep.

LJane
LJane
8 months ago

Please send them to Portland and Seattle, too.

Mary Dickens
Mary Dickens
8 months ago

In my opinion, all illegals should have been sent to Washington DC first! Where the folks who are running (ruining) our lives could see first hand what their decisions are doing to our country

Scott Schmidt
Scott Schmidt
8 months ago

I disagree. Dems aren’t upset that illegals are flooding in. That is all going exactly as planned.
Dems aren’t fighting to close the border, or stem the flow, or send any of the illegals home. Dems are demanding more money in order to process them faster into the country. Dems want more money to feed, house and care for illegals. Dems want future dem voters as kids age and amnesty allows.
This is all about MORE $ for dems, more govt control, and more dem voters.
Dems aren’t upset AT ALL about the flood of illegals streaming into our country. Things are going exactly as planned, and we are all falling for it.

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