ANDREW NEIL: Are scenes like this the reason millions of legal immigrants sent Trump back to the White House?

If Donald Trump returns to the White House (which would make him the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1893 to serve two nonconsecutive terms), his victory will depend on many factors.

A rosy look at the economy under Trump before the pandemic struck. It’s the punishing inflation of the Biden years that plunders the wallets of ordinary Americans every time they go to buy gas or groceries. What suddenly happened to the American people when the Democratic elite decided to abandon Joe Biden was Kamala Harris’ failure to appeal to voters or dispel the widespread notion that she was actually a bit of a slob.

But perhaps Trump will owe this most to one issue above all others: illegal immigration.

Six in ten Americans view immigration as ‘very important’ in deciding how they vote, according to Washington-based think tank Pew Research Center. Those most interested in the issue overwhelmingly think Trump is more likely to solve this problem than Harris.

Illegal immigration, sometimes euphemistically referred to as ‘undocumented immigration’ by liberals, is the most visible failure of the Biden-Harris years.

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, it would make him the first president since Grover Cleveland

Migrants hike to a makeshift camp located near the I-8 highway in Jacumba Springs, California, USA

This is a failure on a staggering scale. The US Border Patrol records ‘encounters’ with immigrants who have entered the country illegally or have taken legal action but are deemed inadmissible. Since Biden-Harris took office in January 2021, there have been a record 10 million such encounters, the vast majority of them crossing the Mexican border.

There were 2.4 million such encounters during the Trump years.

Trump claims that 21 million illegals have flooded into America under the Biden-Harris administration but has never provided a source for that figure. Regardless, the official figures are bad enough.

Crucially, it does not include those who entered the country undetected, adding at least 1.5 million to the known 10 million.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States as of January 2022. This is probably an underestimate. The truth is that no one knows the real number. Illegal immigrants don’t go around advertising their addresses.

America, of course, is a famous country of immigrants. It will continue to host a significant number of people from all over the world for the foreseeable future.

However, the national consensus overwhelmingly favors controlled immigration that is legal, orderly and in numbers the country can easily absorb. There is widespread anger over America’s loss of control of its borders. This issue is especially toxic for Harris.

Biden tasked him with tightening the southern border in the early days of his administration. It was a hospital pass of sorts, but he couldn’t help himself; When asked why he still hadn’t visited the Mexican border months after taking office, he sarcastically replied that he hadn’t visited Europe either.

Kamala Harris, who suddenly turned on the American people when the Democratic elite decided to abandon Joe Biden, failed to attract the attention of voters

A Mexican immigration officer checks immigrants’ documents in Tijuana, Mexico

The truth is that Biden has accomplished nothing as ‘border czar’. He even began to deny that he had such a role, but it is clear on the record that he did.

As the 2024 elections approached, the administration began issuing executive orders tightening border controls. The number of illegal crossings has decreased.

But this only raises the question of why such steps were not taken from the beginning. The answer is self-explanatory.

Biden-Harris presided over a lax immigration regime because they thought it would appeal to the millions of Hispanic and black voters who form a crucial part of the Democratic coalition. This just showed how uninterested they were.

Newcomers who have patiently waited to enter the country legally and now struggle to support their families with menial jobs for minimum wage are the ones most outraged by the massive influx of illegal immigrants because their businesses are struggling the most. risk.

The ‘let them all in’ gang of well-off bloviators who dominate publishing in America have nothing to lose. Their work is not clear.

But those working in low-wage, unskilled jobs are right to worry because unscrupulous employers may replace them with even lower-paid new immigrants.

That’s a big reason why Trump won more Hispanic and black votes than usual for a Republican, especially among men. It’s a shift in voting habits that could make the difference between victory or defeat for Trump.

There was a time when mass flows of illegal immigrants were a problem for heavily repressed border states. (Donald Trump speaks at the border near Coronado National Monument in Montezuma Pass, Arizona)

Trump doesn’t need a majority of Hispanic votes to win; just enough to make a difference in swing states.

A recent NBC/Telemundo poll showed support for Harris among Hispanics at 54 percent, compared to 40 percent for Trump. A 14-point lead might seem impressive, but at this stage of the 2020 campaign, Biden had a 36-point advantage among Hispanics.

Trump doesn’t need a majority of Hispanic votes to win; Enough to make a difference in swing states so close that even a shift of just a few thousand votes could determine the outcome. Immigration could be an issue that turns things around by increasing its support among Hispanics and blacks.

MSNBC, the main broadcast arm of the Democratic Party, was forced to confront this inconvenient reality last month on air by the large number of black and Hispanic voters in Pennsylvania, the swing state with the most votes (19 out of 538 nationwide). It’s clear they voted for Trump because they wanted a President who would take back control of the country’s borders. Some complained that ‘illegal aliens’ were taking their jobs. Others wondered aloud what it meant that millions of people could violate the legal immigration process with impunity. Some even supported Trump’s policy of mass deportation of illegals (although that is unlikely to happen).

I suspect the MSNBC hosts are still in a state of shock.

There was a time when mass flows of illegal immigrants were a problem for heavily repressed border states. Until governors like Greg Abbott of Texas came up with the genius idea of ​​busing them to cities whose Democratic mayors had signaled they were “sanctuary” cities accepting illegal immigrants. They changed their tune when tens of thousands of people were deposited in the centers of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and other cities.

Soon mayors were begging border countries to stop sending them. New York’s boast of being a haven cost it around $1.5bn (£1.15bn) last year.

Those most interested in the issue overwhelmingly think Trump is more likely to solve this problem than Harris.

This still may not be enough to return Trump to power. But without him there probably wouldn’t have been a second chance at victory

Moreover, people far from the border could now see the consequences of uncontrolled illegal immigration on their own doorstep.

Texas alone sent almost 120,000 immigrants to sanctuary cities across the country, including 45,000 to New York. The political consequences were enormous and turned illegal immigration into a national problem.

I’m currently living in New York City and every morning I pass by the iconic Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan. It closed during the pandemic and is currently used as a clearing center and hostel for immigrants.

There’s an air of menace as men wander around aimlessly huddled together, the entire block has now become a scene of urban squalor (on Madison Avenue!) and most of the surrounding shops are shuttered and boarded up.

It is natural for families sitting on the pavement with their suitcases and nowhere to go to feel sad.

But there is also a backlash of anger against those who allow uncontrolled migration, which creates these terrible conditions.

As the campaign enters its final week, Harris is still struggling to come up with convincing answers.

America is not alone in the immigration issue that has changed the face of politics. This is a trend seen throughout the democratic world.

This looks set to put an end to the political career of Justin Trudeau, who long dominated Canadian politics but whose personal ratings have now plummeted due to his open-door immigration policy.

He suddenly became an advocate for the controls, but it was too late to save himself. Canada’s Conservative Party looks poised to win the next election, and Trudeau’s Liberal Party doesn’t even want him to run again.

This issue proved to be the undoing of the Conservative Party, who found themselves at the wrong end of the landslide in July; partly because they continue to preside over the sharpest-ever rise in immigration after promising Brexit would bring immigration under control.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally replaced the mainstream center-right party, which now barely exists. In Italy, anti-immigrant Giorgia Meloni is the prime minister of the most right-wing government since World War II. In Germany, the mainstream centre-right Christian Democrats have only retained their relevance thanks to a solid approach to the Right on immigration.

These days, there is no other problem other than immigration regarding the power that can disrupt the established orders in democracies.

Now he may be about to do the same in the country created by immigrants.

This still may not be enough to return Trump to power. But if this hadn’t happened, he probably wouldn’t have had a second chance at victory.