President Trump has promised mass deportations. Mass deportations, we know from a large number of opinion polls, is a popular idea. (At least, unless and until such mass deportations start to have an impact on the economy or the daily life of ordinary Americans—this remains to be seen.)

But mass deportations of illegal aliens, especially if focused on illegal aliens who commit violent crimes, is not the alpha and omega of immigration policy.

Everyone in Republican politics knows that there is a very strong "as long as it's legal" contingent, particularly powerful among the establishment and donor class, who may make (with varying degrees of sincerity) very good noises on illegal immigration, but still support very high overall immigration numbers. "As long as it's legal." Indeed, President Trump himself, for all his alleged far-right extremism, has, on more than one occasion, sounded as if he belongs to this club.

The rule of law is, of course, a fundamentally important value. But if you also care about things such as wage levels for lower-skilled work, or cultural cohesion, the actual levels of immigration also matter a lot, regardless of whether that immigration happens to be legal or not.

The fact that the Democrats' border policies have been so reckless have allowed Republicans to side-step this important debate, since here was a thing so obviously insane we could all agree to oppose it.

Into this breach steps Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, with an important article at Tom Klingenstein's website. He takes as his foil Vivek Ramaswamy's "national libertarianism" concept, which, to us, sounds like libertarianism tout court.

Here is the crux of Krikorian's response: "Because America is not just a propositional nation, but rather an actual homeland for an actual people, becoming an American entails more than just passing a social studies test."

He goes on: "The late sociologist Lawrence Fuchs described the children of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii in the 1920s reciting speeches about 'our Pilgrim forefathers' – not because they were descended from Mayflower passengers (like, say, Barack Obama) but because this was now their homeland and its history was their history, its heroes their heroes." There is here an echo of how French schools would teach young African and Indochinese pupils to recite "Our ancestors the Gauls."

Yes, people from every race and religion can become American, but to become an American means embracing more than just a short list of abstract propositions about the structure of government, as important as these foundational American ideals are. It means embracing a culture and a history—a culture and a history on which, by the way, those all-important constitutional ideals rest. As a Catholic of Latin descent, your correspondent can attest for the fact that the beautiful ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are, very specifically and very identifiably, a cultural outgrowth of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Which suggests to this writer that unless Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture is dominant in America (maybe not the only culture, but dominant), then those cherished ideals about the structure of government are also doomed to "perish from the earth."

Again, none of this is to say that only Anglo-Saxon Protestants can be American. But that for the American experiment to endure based on its foundations, new Americans need to assimilate into its historic culture and not just a summary of 8th grade social studies. And, as Krikorian writes: "This kind of emotional assimilation takes time and nurturing and requires the inflow of newcomers who need to undergo it to be small — or at least to take a pause after the admission of tens of millions. All the more so when our assimilating institutions — schools, churches, workplaces — are still in the thrall of our post-American leadership class, regardless of this month’s electoral successes."

To be fair, Krikorian notes that Ramaswamy denies that he is an advocate of increased immigration. Indeed, according to Ramaswamy, "With more stringent screening of those immigrants for loyalty, for civic knowledge, confirmation of their ability to make contributions there would almost certainly be far fewer immigrants entering the United States."

And immigration restrictionists should be more forthright about what economic tradeoffs they're willing to accept as the price for higher national and cultural cohesion.

It's an important debate. And, if President Trump follows up on his promises of mass deportation, it's one we won't be able to avoid anymore.

SEE ALSO: Our Long-Form Interview with Mark Krikorian On Everyting Immigration-Related →

Policy News You Need to Know

#Immigration — Speaking of immigration, President Trump has confirmed, via a post on Truth Social, that he is prepared to use his authority to declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to implement his mass deportation plan.

#MAHA — Vox has an overview of RFK Jr's past positions and potential actions as HHS Secretary. Obviously Vox doesn't like RFK Jr at all, but the article is relatively balanced, which is difficult to do given RFK's mix of crankish and commonsensical views.

#MAHA #Vaccines #Autism — Speaking of, here's a very good article at The Free Press by Jill Escher, President of the National Council on Severe Autism. Escher goes over the evidence that vaccines don't cause autism, and the article is valuable if only for that reason. But she also notes that there has been an alarming rise in autism, including severe autism, in children these past few decades; that Donald Trump and RFK Jr are the only politicians willing to touch this important issue; and that current science doesn't really have good answers, which justifies at least a dose of anti-establishmentarian disruption to the status quo. The article is full of good suggestions on what useful things a "good version" of RFK Jr might do as HHS Secretary to help address this important issue. "Let’s dive in. Let’s solve this. Let’s, yes, Make America Healthy Again. RFK Jr. and Trump are right to shine a spotlight," Escher concludes.

#KOSA — KOSA is an important effort to protect children from the deleterious effects of social platforms. The bill passed the Senate in a near-unanimous vote but has been stalled in the House. The Journal's Georgia Wells, Kristina Peterson, and Natalie Andrews have a very good report on how this change in congressional sentiment is the product of big tech lobbying weaponizing the culture war: "For liberal lawmakers, they focus on LGBTQ expression, amplifying worries that officials could censor queer youth. With conservative lawmakers they talk about how they fear antiabortion positions could be censored."

#Recess — Since there is much discussion on the possibility of President Trump naming his cabinet via recess appointments, over at the Center for Renewing America, Jeff Clark and Anthony Licata have a very useful brief on the President's powers to make recess appointments, in which they argue that the President's powers in this area are broad. Sed contra, the formidable Ed Whelan of EPPC argues that the recess appointment scheme contemplated by some, where the House would deliberately disagree with the Senate about recess, and thereby (so the argument goes, anyway) give the President power under Article II, Section 3 to make recess appointments, is unconstitutional.

#Energy — President Trump will appoint Doug Burgum as Secretary of the Interior and Energy "Czar" (one of our favorite "DC things" is that in DC, a "czar" (a person with a bureaucratic coordinating position with no power apart from support from the White House) is the literal opposite of a czar (an autocrat)), with a mandate for American "energy dominance". Burgum is highly capable as a self-made billionaire, and has key experience as a former governor of North Dakota: the state is known as a haven for shale oil, being the third-largest crude oil-producing state in the nation; what's less known is that under his governorship the state has also made inroads in other sources like wind and hydrogen. This is clearly a topic that Burgum is highly knowledgeable and passionate about. At Interior, Burgum will naturally look to increase leases of federal land for the purposes of oil and gas exploration, as part of "drill, baby, drill," which is good, but he will also presumably take an interest in permitting reform to enable more production of other sources of energy, particularly, we hope, nuclear.

#FreeSpeech — Another important and key nomination: the excellent Brendan Carr will be nominated to chair the FCC. He has stated that reestablishing free speech will be one of his priorities. Amen.

#K12 #EdReform — Very interesting paper from Duke's E. Jason Baron: when Wisconsin took teacher pay rules out of unions' power in 2011, this opened the door to individual and merit-based pay; this in turn attracted more talented college graduates from more selective universities to the teaching profession; this in turn increased K-12 achievement. Once again, conservatives were right all along!

#FamilyPolicy — The Institute for Family Studies, whose research is always fascinating, has produced a very interesting survey on young adults' relationship with emerging technology. Some facts of note from the survey: 25% of young adults believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships, and the demographic most open to romantic relationships with AI are…heavy porn users.

#DemsInDisarray — As you know, we don't usually recommend podcasts, but here's a transcript of Ezra Klein's recent podcast with Michael Lind. Lind, as you may know, is a professor at UT Austin and is known for his "populist" views that put him often at odds with left-wing elites. The podcast is kind of a cri de coeur for Klein, who clearly has had it up to here with the woke activists who have a stranglehold on Democratic elites (why didn't he say so before the election??), and is kind of fascinating as a sociological artifact of how non-insane liberal elites are thinking in the current moment.

#History — Bard College's Sean McMeekin is quickly rising to become one of the greatest historians of his generation. His tome Stalin's War is a tour de force of archival work and documentation, and should be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in World War II. His eponymous book on The Berlin-Baghdad Express was fascinating, illuminating an important but underappreciated front of World War I. Your correspondent has yet to read his July 1914: Countdown to War (you can guess what it's about) but knows it has been very well received and that it corrects many misconceptions advanced by Barbara Tuchman's regrettably famous Guns of August. Anyway, this is a long prolegomenon to say he has written an op-ed in favor of a very commonsensical proposition at The Federalist: the US government should declassify historical documents that are currently classified, it seems, for no good reason other than bureaucratic inertia.