No, the US is not a 'nation of immigrants'

Today's left lives for identity politics. Without the suffixes “-ism” or “-phobia,” Democrats would have to defend unpopular policies such as child genital mutilation and open borders. The 2024 election showed just how ill-prepared they are to do that.

Since the election, having abandoned the soul-searching that normally follows a loss, they are already back to spasmodically shouting and tweeting out buzzwords and prefab talking points. Nowhere is that more apparent right now than in the debate around immigration and the rapid mass deportation of criminals just initiated by the Trump administration.

President Trump was quite clear about his plans regarding the millions of illegal immigrants who were welcomed into the country by the Biden administration's policy choices. Everyone heard the promise of “mass deportations," and they heard it in so many words that they cannot be shocked.

Deportation, a concept almost as old as civilization itself, has somehow become a new outrage. Democrats went berserk over the idea of aggressively removing criminals — including convicted child rapists, murderers, gang members and repeat drunk drivers — who have been in the country illegally.

When Colombia refused to accept two planeloads of their own citizens — likely because it didn’t want its violent criminals back — Democrats had a few minutes to rejoice. After four years of not caring about the Biden-era food inflation that had enraged voters, they all became very concerned about the cost of coffee and flowers. In fact, they nearly all invoked those two same Colombian exports, in which they suspiciously all became experts at the same time.

“To 'punish' Colombia, Trump is about to make every American pay even more for coffee,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), lamenting the expulsion of thousands of violent criminals in the first week of Trump's administration.

"The View" and CNN personality Ana Navarro tweeted, “Most of the flowers imported into the US, come from Colombia. Happy Valentine’s Day, America.”

What’s a little sexual assault or gang violence when a dozen red roses could cost a couple bucks more? I suspect most American women would take the other side of this issue.

This shows just how broken progressive social media really is. Put aside the merits of the question — the absurdity of prioritizing coffee and flowers over safety, and the fact that both coffee and flowers are available from multiple countries around the world. Rather, just consider how insane it is for these leftist drones to react to a hugely popular mass-deportation of criminals by copy-pasting about coffee and flowers from some DNC memo they got in their inbox.

Adding to the hilarity, it took less than an hour for Colombia's president to capitulate. It happened so quickly that some of them were still pushing their posts about coffee and flowers after the issue had been resolved.

The thing that struck me the most were the proclamations that came from actress Selena Gomez and CBS News journalist Margaret Brennan. Gomez tearfully proclaimed, “All my people are getting attacked, the children.” How, exactly, are criminal illegal immigrants “her people," not her fellow Americans, of all races and backgrounds, whom they routinely victimize?

Brennan, in an attempted debate with Vice President JD Vance (because that's what it was), declared, “Well, this is a country founded by immigrants.”

Vance had a brilliant response. But the underlying point is that we are not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation that takes in a lot of immigrants historically, but even today, only 14 percent of the population of the U.S. is foreign-born.

The remaining 86 percent of us are native to the U.S. And how many generations of your family have to be born here before you're no longer tied to your ancestors' Old World homelands? I have neither visited nor even met anyone from my ancestors' home countries of origin. I am just an American, like anyone else born an American to Americans.

The American public supports mass deportations, especially of criminals. All Trump is doing is keeping his campaign promises. I realize both are repugnant concepts to so much of the political class, but that is what we voted for. As much as they may love to force conformity and obedience upon an unwilling public, progressives' sensibilities are not legally binding.

Trump is president for the next four years. And when he enforces immigration law, he is fully within the scope of presidential powers and federal statutes. Democrats would prefer to ignore our laws, and Trump is following them — yet he’s somehow the “threat to democracy”?

Gee, I think Democrats might be wrong about that one, too.

Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).

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