Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
The Traditional Immigrant
Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo, and a host of others.
The Greek American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film America, America is a fictional account based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States from an impoverished and hostile Turkish Anatolia.
The film summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts.
An excellent example is the recently released memoir from Encounter Books, American Trojan, by former University of Southern California president and Cypriot immigrant Dr. Max Nikias. It resonates with thankfulness to America for offering him opportunities undreamed of elsewhere.
He and his wife arrived in the U.S. from war-torn Cyprus nearly penniless but determined to work hard, master English, and enrich the country that welcomed them with their talents and education. What followed was an amazing American trajectory that saw Nikias become president of the University of Southern California—arguably the most successful one in recent memory.
I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan, and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America, and productive farms were models for U.S. non-immigrants. Such immigrants explained why the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive and richest agricultural region in the nation.
My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America.
Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II. One was disabled, and another was killed on Okinawa. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America.
Gratitude and Ingratitude
But recently, something has gone terribly wrong with immigration—an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.
During World War II, Japanese Americans fought heroically in horrific conditions in Italy in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion—even as their families were interned in the Western United States. Few native-born Americans were more loyal or patriotic than the Japanese Americans.
And now?
While America is at war with Iran and de facto with its terrorist proxies, crowds of immigrants, visitors, and foreign students in New York scream anti-American slogans as they cheer on our enemies in theocratic Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Are we surprised, then, when Islamic terrorists begin hunting down Americans on our own soil?
On campuses today, thousands of Middle Eastern international students, mostly arriving from autocratic, tribal, and failed nations, have staged often violent demonstrations in the years following the October 7, 2023, massacre. They are not shy about cheering on the Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians.
These pro-Hamas students have not just damned Israel but also often harassed Jewish Americans. They revile their host America and expect Americans to smile and shrug.
It is hard to determine whether such zealots hate the U.S. more than they love living in America and preserving their student visas and work permits.
Hating or Loving the Great Satan?
Take Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani. She is the daughter of Ali Larijani, one of the late Supreme Leader Khamenei’s murderous henchmen. He sent his daughter Fatemeh to the top schools in the satanic United States. She was eventually even hired as a professor at Emory University—at least until popular outrage at the Larijani family’s hypocrisy prompted her dismissal.
To our enemies in Iran, we may be the “Great Satan.” But Iranian theocrats apparently prefer their children and other relatives to study and get rich in Luciferian America. So, many send their kids to universities in the USA.
Another surreal example is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, who arrived on a student visa at Columbia University and soon led the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
When the State Department sought to revoke his temporary visa, the Left made Khalil a veritable martyr. Apparently, his university supporters reasoned that the U.S. had an obligation to invite to its shores those who are active supporters of terrorists like Hamas.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a naturalized citizen from Uganda whose parents became public figures and multimillionaires in America, in the past has had little good to say about his adopted country.
His quite public wife, Rama, whose parents were naturalized Syrian citizens, illustrated a book that was rife with antisemitism. It’s no accident that after October 7, she posted “likes” of social media praise of the terrorist Hamas killers, who are sworn enemies of her own country.
Many Somali immigrants of Minneapolis repaid the kindness of Americans in welcoming them from war-torn Somalia by committing the greatest welfare fraud in U.S. history, which may reach $9 billion in theft. Their iconic representative, Ilhan Omar, has voiced antisemitic vitriol, downplayed 9/11, claimed the U.S. has a dictatorship worse than the one she fled, and said the U.S. was turning into one of the worst countries in the world. That is the thanks she returns for entering a hospitable America under controversial circumstances and dubious legality.
Hating—or Hating to Leave—America?
Stranger still is the attitude of visitors and illegal aliens when they finally face deportation.
Joe Biden allowed 10–12 million foreign nationals to illegally enter the U.S. during his tenure, among them some 500,000 known criminals. In the years since his inauguration, not a day goes by without news that illegal aliens of that era have murdered, assaulted, been arrested for felonious acts, or caused horrific auto accidents.
One of them was Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, an illegal alien from El Salvador, who long ago was ordered to be deported for his unlawful entry and residence.
Instead, he too became an icon to the Left when he was recently and belatedly facing permanent deportation. He had clearly ignored his earlier deportation orders, and was an alleged gang member, an often violent spousal abuser, and a human trafficker.
Ábrego Garcia apparently felt he had a right to enter the U.S. illegally. He successfully made a mockery of our immigration laws. But he presciently expected that soon hundreds of thousands of dollars of free legal help would come his way, ensuring he could stay in the country for which he showed utter contempt.
And in the U.S., one of the most bizarre aspects of recent protests against ICE efforts involved episodes of Mexican nationals waving the flag of the country to which under no circumstances they wished to return, even as they burned the flag of the nation in which they insisted they had an innate right to stay.
Our New Americans Killing Americans
Yet the immigration disaster transcends student visas and illegal aliens, since it extends to many naturalized citizens as well.
Consider the terrorist acts that have transpired in just the last eight days.
On March 1, Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Senegal, shot up a beer garden in Austin, Texas. He murdered three people and wounded 14 others. Diagne wore a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt, along with an Iranian flag T-shirt.
On March 7, 2026, Emir Balat, the son of a naturalized citizen from Turkey, and Ibrahim Kayumi, the son of naturalized Afghan refugees, threw IEDs toward a conservative protest outside Gracie Mansion, the New York mayor’s residence.
The media sought to cover up their Islamist motives but could not, given that the two terrorists openly boasted of their aims. Indeed, the two bragged that they wanted to achieve something “bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing.”
That was a reference to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the murderous Chechen-immigrant brothers. In 2013, they murdered three and injured hundreds at the Boston Marathon. Their aim too was apparently to further the so-called global “Islamic cause.”
This same week, on March 12, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, another naturalized U.S. citizen, this time from Sierra Leone, went into an ROTC meeting at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Once there, he murdered the instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a decorated combat veteran. Jalloh shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he fired. Jalloh had previously been convicted for attempting to support ISIS but was released before serving his full sentence.
That same March day, Ayman Muhammed Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, whose family in the Middle East currently has strong Hezbollah terrorist ties, drove his car rigged with explosive fireworks into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
Ghazali was killed by security guards before he could carry out his homicidal plan. Hezbollah, remember, in the past, butchered hundreds of Americans in Lebanon.
There is an endless list of illegal aliens and naturalized citizens who have killed hundreds of Americans, both as common criminals and as would-be jihadists.
And not all the killing is intentional. Thousands of driver’s licenses have been issued to both illegal aliens and legal residents from all over the world, including those who do not understand English, cannot pass a commercial driver’s test, and are utterly unqualified to drive. Is it any surprise that we have recently witnessed serial horrific crashes, where incompetent drivers rammed their 80,000-pound semi-trucks into unsuspecting drivers?
What Happened to Immigration?
So what made the U.S. adopt such a suicidal immigration and visitation policy—one that welcomes in millions illegally, hundreds of thousands who are known criminals, tens of thousands of students who despise the U.S., and thousands of terrorists themselves and their sympathizers?
In the mid-1960s, amid the Great Society’s dreams of transforming America, new immigration laws were passed that ended the older quota process. That traditional system tended to favor better-off immigrants from Europe and the former British Empire to reflect somewhat the founding demographics of the republic.
But the new law junked the prior merit-based system and instead admitted immigrants chiefly on the basis of family ties and the purported need of the host country for inexpensive labor—with most now arriving from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Suddenly, far less important for entry were critical skill sets, English mastery, high school diplomas, proof of self-support, and knowledge of, or familiarity with, the American system.
But in the subsequent 60 years, Democrats went even further beyond the 1965 Hart–Celler Act efforts to change the demography of the U.S. They began welcoming in anyone, legal or not, who simply crashed the border or claimed they wanted to study in the U.S. The old melting pot was banished, replaced by the “salad bowl.”
Immigration was seen by the Left as the answer to why they had never been able to complete their socialist agendas amid a skeptical American public. Supposedly, by welcoming in a “diverse” demographic, poor and without English fluency, they would grow the welfare state, creating a new dependent constituency.
The new immigrants and visitors were envisioned as left-wing voters-to-be who would look to the Democratic Party as their guarantors of open borders, a new entitlement society, and a criminal justice system that saw the perpetrator as a victim—and the real criminal as a racist America itself.
Diversity, the Immigration Force Multiplier
The new “diversity” ideology peaked under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The subtext of their open-borders nihilism was a new oppressor/oppressed binary.
It dictated that traditional America was still too white, too traditionalist, too Christian, too unfairly successful—and too hostile to the Democratic-socialist agenda of a mandated equality of result achieved through massive coercive government redistributive efforts.
Under this warped view, the criminally minded Ábrego Garcia became a victim of supposed “Gestapo” ICE “goons” (ironic, when patriotic and skilled Mexican American officers disproportionately staff ICE ranks).
The Tsarnaev Boston Marathon killers became “hot” underdog freedom fighters. So the supposedly sexy, photogenic young murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was highlighted on the cover of Rolling Stone.
The more Mahmoud Khalil took on the mantle of an anti-American, pro-Hamas activist, the more the Left rallied to his cause.
When Major Nidal Hasan, the son of naturalized Palestinian immigrants, slaughtered 13 and wounded 32 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, the Pentagon resisted efforts to tie him to the Islamic terrorist cause. That was hard to do, since he screamed “Allahu Akbar!” as he mowed down his fellow soldiers.
Then Army Chief of Staff George Casey responded to the mass murder with his lamentation on CNN that, “As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” He sought to quash any speculation about Hasan’s Islamic motives, in fear that the ensuing truth might endanger the Army’s diversity efforts.
Then we come to the case of Eileen Gu, the recent American Winter Olympic multi-medalist skier.
She was born in San Francisco to a Chinese immigrant mother and an American father and lived her entire life in the U.S. But Gu chose to compete in the games for communist China, despite its efforts to isolate, dehumanize, and eventually vastly “reduce” its Uyghur minority population.
Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster
The final irony: Why do so many criminals believe they can enter the U.S. illegally and get away with murder?
Is it because they feel contempt for any nation that opens its borders, requires no background checks, destroys its own immigration laws, and weaponizes its criminal justice system to make the criminal the victim and the state his victimizer?
Why do so many burn the U.S. flag while waving the flag of Mexico, a country they have no intention of returning to?
Is it because they sense they might be praised for “celebrating diversity,” as the popular culture would term such abject cultural schizophrenia?
Why would the Tsarnaev brothers repay the country that took them in by killing innocent Americans?
Would it be because, in their formative years in American schools, their teachers and texts emphasized what was wrong with a supposedly exploitative U.S.?
Why, in the middle of a near-existential war with Iran to stop its efforts to obtain nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles pointed at the U.S. and its allies, would naturalized citizens feel so free to slaughter Americans for the cause of Islam?
Would it be because they sense from left-wing universities and popular culture that it is a virtual open season on Jews?
Or that any time an Islamic terrorist commits an act, a Democratic operative will warn America of “Islamophobia”—as if, say, mowing down soldiers at Fort Hood is the lesser crime?
Why would a rich, privileged Eileen Gu feel no discomfort competing for a murderous regime whose agenda is to displace her country from its global preeminence in favor of a communist dictatorship?
Is it because in our relativist modern America, Gu’s “truth” is just as meaningful as any other? And who, after all, is qualified to judge anything or anyone?
Who created our current Frankensteinian monstrosities?
We did.
We are the Dr. Frankensteins who asked nothing of immigrants, in a complete break from our nation’s past.
And we got our wish for a new, quite different class of immigrants, who treated the U.S. the very way they were taught to do by the Left: as an evil entity that deserved what it got.
And we sure have gotten it.
Why are all these things happening? Does our government owe us quality of life? In other words do we owe it to everyone that makes up our country?
Government is supposed to provide the centrally managed things that allow individuals to self-determine. No? To heck with that racist and supremacist dribble. Anyone harmed by anything in any way to any degree deserves maximum compassion and understanding in the form of free lawyers to represent their complaint and get the cash and resources regardless of the harm it might cause.
It’s a great scam. The theft of public money is oh so much easier in a welfare state. It is harder to steal when the mission is relatively simple – fix the roads, keep the lights on, provide decent schools and hospitals. The results are plainly visible.
When the political mission is a murky mess of feel-good social causes and special interest grifting it’s a lot easier to siphon off funds with no one the wiser. Follow the money.
Hoist by our own petards.
We’ve become a nation of spectators of own demise.
It is wonderful that you point to “Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani” as an example of Islamist hypocrisy in a column posted the very day her father was deservedly blown to kingdom come.
Is the Just War, “Jus ad bellum” concept argued by Augustine of Hippo an appropriate definition for the attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Muslims are historically Arabs, but Iranians are historically Persian. Radical Muslims should not be allowed to immigrate as they have no intent to honestly abide by our constitutional legal system.
Time was that Americans were embarrassed about needing welfare. I read recently that some SNAP recipients are suing the government over a trial program preventing the use of SNAP to buy junk food.
Is it a coincidence that immigrants are no longer grateful for the opportunity as America has changed from asking not what their country can do for them to demanding more “freebies”? Americans no longer want a stronger America offering opportunities but want to grab a tarnished brass ring. How many Americans see their best shot not as the opportunity to prove themselves but getting an extra $100 from a debt ridden government (while taxing others)? Take from others and gimme.
Squash the welfare state to those that truly need it. Stop punishing successful people and business. Focus on rewarding achievement. Maybe Americans will respond by trying to achieve more.
The current emphasis is upon finding and deporting illegals who have committed crimes in the US. This is more “acceptable” to the media. But it is creating a false standard: If you come here illegally – and don’t commit felonies – you can stay.
I asked ChatGpt for the number of illegal aliens that have been deported for having committed felonies. It hedged its answer, but said 89,000 in 2024. That would yield 356,000 during the four years of the Biden administration, when 10 million illegal aliens entered the US. So, using the now-accepted “standard,” over 9,600,000 illegal aliens will be allowed to stay – if they don’t commit crimes (other than coming here illegally).
more evidence of Progressivism as cultural malignancy and programmed cell death….
In the Gu case, her motivation is very American; She is reaching for the gold (ducats). The fastest way to wealth is, for her, not immoral or that the morality in China is not relevant to her life in the US. She is certainly not illegal in the US,… at this point. Plus I think it was reported a family member is getting CCP supplements as well. We should all ponder whether Fang Fang is Gu’s philosophical big sister.
Another great summary by Victor. All great comments. What’s holding us back from reclaiming our country?
As always, VDH proves to be most brilliant man on the planet! Thank you for this. I would love to hear an interview with VDH and Peter Schweizer discussing Peter’s book, The Invisible Coup.
Well said Captain Obvious… “. No border, no nation”
Great article. When immigrants are given US citizenship for nothing then they will no value it as much as someone who has earned it.
Pretty much sums it up — but Pandora’s box has been opened and there’s no fetching and re-boxing all that has escaped. Look at England today? People trying to take back their country and a feckless government. Dictatorship and authoritarianism are the only possible solution, but we will not go that route. If the radical Islamists take over, the Leftists will be at the top of their list to eliminate, but then the rest of Americans will be forced to convert or be killed. That’s jihad and it’s long term. Christian crusaders rising up in our heartland?? Seems unlikely, don’t you think?
“…And we sure have gotten it.” All of this was predicted and debated in the 1990s, even after 911.
Unless it is halted now, in the 2040s it will roar back in a 1789 Terror-like bloodbath when whites reach plurality or minority status in the West.
We MUST adopt an immigration policy similar to that Canada had back in the 1970’s. I am acquainted with it because I went through it and emigrated to that nation in 1975.
apply whilst still resident in the US. ell thm why, they asked to know how I planned my support I had a trade and operaaed my own business, and could show a need in that trade in the area to whicj I wanted to move.
Next, had to travel to meet in person with the Canadian Comsulate. They were not local to me. Extensive interview by multiple agents. They considered, then let me know i was accepted. I had six months to make the move. List all persononal items as settler’s goods,, tell them where I was bound, then check in at the border when I arrived.
I was also clearly advised in wriing, with clear acknowledgement, that should I ever need assistance by government theybwould, indeed, be haopy to assist me…… by purchasing a one way ticket back to my US residence, meet me at my home and escort me to the airport, escort me onto the plane, and order the airline to not allow me to deplane until in the US.
NO dependence, no mercy, either I was to cut the mustard or be bounced back to my earlier home.
I did well, but 5 years on I decided to return to the US. No regrets on going, nor returning.
During the recent madness related to the Vie russ I was exceedingly glad I was in the US and not Canada. I had been here durig the tenure o M. Trudeau P´ere, which was bad enough. but bis son? Nope
Many Christians believe God is bringing Mulslims to the U.S. so that Christians may witness to them for Christ. I understand that sentiment. But, practically it seems Muslims will form large enclaves ( A.K.A. Dearborne) where non-Muslims are outnumbered & Christians will have great difficulty convincing Muslims to convert since they receive all the aid they need from their own community. Further, as VDH points out, they don’t seem grateful or value what is bring done for them by infidels .
Wow! Your summary is 100% cortect and too often ignored. We failed to tell our children why so many were willing to die in WWII for a nation not theirs, we gloated over our Great New Society, stumbled through Woodstock, swallowed whole Critical Studies that criticized all that was good about our country, we voted for Barack Obama’s “fundamental change”, embraced the destruction of our medical system, denied election fraud, pretended not to notice the stumbling and mumbling of a gradually dementing pseudo-President, and sat bewildered that millions of illegals pranced across our open border, helped themselves to copious welfare, robbed our social net, and killed our neighbors. But we voted for this, or stood by while our votes were stolen. So now we are at another crossroads. Have we learned anything? Or will we sit home, and watch the same primary drivers of our destruction regain power in November?
“The question is how do we deal with these individuals/families who broke the law entering the US but have been good citizens since.” Simple. We try like hell to deport them anyway. If they were not born here or naturalized here, they are not citizens. They can be good “citizens” in their own God-forsaken countries. Until the Communists win back the White House and the terrible cycle starts again.
As an individual employed by Citizenship and Immigration Services, I can attest to the fact that it is much much worse than you can even imagine. I work in the background check unit and the vast majority of people with criminal records are given amnesty/relief by Immigration Judges. Many of them with very serious criminal records. Many immigration lawyers commit fraud or outright lie and cheat the system for their “clients”. To be honest it’s very disheartening and if the job didn’t pay so well I would move on. After serving 29 years in the military defending America, it’s hard to see what our failed immigration system is doing to our country. So many parallels to what happened with Rome.
I’d feel more optimistic if I heard that prosecutors who won’t prosecute, judges who repeatedly make decisions that endanger public safety, legislators who feel emboldened to insult America and misuse federal funds, were removed from office. Instead we just wait for Dems to win again, and reverse any reforms made by this Administration.
Victor: As usual excellent. To avoid open borders, which would also give you overstays, one has to vet who comes into our nation (students, tourists, residents) and determine why we want them here. If we are simply willing to roll the dice, we will also get millions of drug dealers, traffickers, career criminals escaping criminal justice in their native country, while yes getting hardworking folks that are part of the 800 million horribly poor around the world seeking a better life, along with the current and future entrepreneurs that have built so many new American companies. But that statute in the harbor is of “liberty”, for people wanting to be free, not those wanting to destroy that last, best hope of mankind, and as the Muslim Brotherhood (and the communists before them) pledged in documents we found during the Holy Land Foundation trial, to kill western civilization with their own hands. There are bad hombres seeking to harm and destroy us. We owe to all who died to keep us free an obligated life of prudence and wisdom, which means inviting people to become Americans, not destroyers of what our founders created 250 years ago.
I have come to despise and detest immigrants as much as they do me, my culture and my history.
Professor Hanson, I concur
Another especially insightful summing-up of immigration in the USA, and by extension, in much of the EU and first-world. It is not too much to say that countless immigrants, especially – or, pimarily – Muslims, haven’t a shred of decency or appreciation to be in the USA or a greatly improved society over the one they left.
When my Irish immigrant ancestors were naturalized in the 1850s, they had to sign an othe of allegiance to their new country. In it, they were specifically required to forswear allegiance to Queen Victoria. I believe immigrants from hostile or incompatible countries or cultures (eg., Sharia) should specifically disavow allegiance to said country or culture. Subsequent advocation for these would be considered immigration fraud and grounds for deportation.
Victor, I know you to be far from xenophobic but you miss two important points regarding immigration.
First is that we no longer require immigrants to be self sufficient. As you noted many immigrants, prior to the welfare state are hard working and entrepreneurial. These are the immigrants from all over the world that made America great.
Second, in line with the first, is that we fail to vet those entering the nation to specific standards. Many came here illegally to better their lives, as erroneously their entry into the US was. They hide in the shadows, not committing additional crimes while contributing to the economics of the nation. The question is how do we deal with these individuals/families who broke the law entering the US but have been good citizens since.
By all means we need to deport the criminals as well as those here legally, via naturalization, that disdain what the USA stands for. Once we rid the nation of those individuals we need stringent standards for those wanting to be US citizens and enforce those standards. That would be a real immigration policy to get behind!
Deportation? We have an unrestrained leftists judiciary of low-level Federal District judges making rulings and judgements that are in line with the liberal mantra of the Democrat party. Unless the cowardly Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court reins in the authority of these non-elected activist judges, we should expect more of the same while the legislative and executive branch of government is in the hands of the Republican party.
Great piece VDH. Always spot on.
My simple belief is that we should “export” any criminal Islamist and add them to a list of “unwelcome here”.
They seem to show disdain for our country yet they stay to take advantage of our largesse.
VDH, thank you for this excellent treatise. And, shame on us for allowing this evil.
No border, no nation.