“Right now, we have more workers than at any time in the history of our country…And people want to come in, and in some cases, they want to take advantage of that, and that’s okay,” President Donald Trump said in a 2018 statement. “And we want them to come in, but they have to come in through merit.”
These narratives paint a vivid picture of America’s struggle with immigration: a "city on a hill" slowly becoming overrun by foreign nationals, purportedly due to open-border policies. The rhetoric suggests the United States suffers from its own success, attracting immigrants who arrive in search of "government handouts" or to evade criminal charges.
According to the Commonwealth Institute, 3 million people in the United States had refugee or political asylum status as of 2016. Many more arrive fleeing natural disasters and violence that do not qualify for "political asylum." Some immigration opponents argue that those fleeing difficult situations should remain in their home countries to effect change. While this is a hopeful perspective, it fails to account for the historical factors that drive migration to the U.S.
The argument assumes that populations in disadvantaged countries possess the infrastructure and capacity to catalyze significant change at a low personal cost. However, in many nations, gang violence, government corruption, and perilous living conditions preclude the possibility of citizens "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps."
Acknowledging the humanitarian drivers of migration is only the first step. Research consistently demonstrates a clear link between U.S. foreign policy trends and immigration rates.
Migration increases from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as recently as the 2000s are deeply connected to U.S.-backed peace agreements in the 1990s. These exoduses stem from the pursuit of neoliberal privatization and "market-friendly" economic policies that undermined progress toward sustainable social peace. Furthermore, foreign investment in extractive sectors displaced rural and Indigenous populations.
The policies of major international institutions—the U.S. government, in particular—exacerbated these trends, leaving people without livelihoods and in danger. Criminal gangs and drug-related violence are manifestations of these underlying processes, which drive waves of "survival migration."
El Salvador serves as a helpful case study when examining U.S. intervention during the Cold War. Scholars have analyzed how U.S. support for the Salvadoran government during its civil war, followed by enforcement-centric immigration policies, created an environment that compelled Salvadorans to flee—a trend that continues today.
El Salvador also serves as a critical example, illustrative of broader U.S. policies toward North Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) and Latin America as a whole.
As Amanda Dixon writes in her research on the intersecting causes of immigration: “The failure of both the Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton administrations to consider the interconnectedness of their foreign and domestic agendas exacerbated the issue of irregular immigration from Central America.”
Research has also illustrated a clear causal relationship between the U.S.-backed Contra War in Nicaragua and an influx of Nicaraguan immigrants into the U.S.
Further, U.S. influence contributed to the Latin American debt crisis, which caused several economies to plunge. Domestic causes of the crisis can be traced to fiscal deficits incurred between 1978 and 1982 and the expansionary monetary policies used to finance them. U.S. commercial banks pushed loans on Latin American countries, creating heavy debt obligations. Subsequently, wealthy countries, including the U.S., raised interest rates to fight inflation, which skyrocketed borrowing costs for Latin America and exacerbated economic conditions that led many to seek a brighter future in the U.S. today.
These historical examples are often viewed as niche or contrarian interests. While significant, they have virtually no impact on how we evaluate current immigration policy beyond a reactive hope that "that doesn’t happen again."
Yet, the U.S. government shows no indication of altering its foreign intervention strategies to mitigate harm or reduce migration, particularly in Latin America.
Operation Absolute Resolve ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, leading to the release of political prisoners and sparking a brief era of optimism. However, Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, assumed power, and no significant regime change appears imminent. Venezuelan funds were subsequently routed through Qatar, which gifted a new Air Force One plane to President Trump, and the New York Times has revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has effectively been managing the country.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also made clear his intention to pursue regime change in Cuba, which has been under U.S. embargo since the 1960s.
Similarly, President Trump has directed significant capital into Argentina to support political allies. The Trump administration intervened financially in the October 2025 Argentine midterm elections by tying a massive economic bailout to the electoral success of Argentine President Javier Milei, emphasizing that Milei’s far-right party must remain in power for U.S. aid to continue amid the country’s persistent inflation and economic instability.
Where does this leave the immigration conversation? Is there value in adding nuance to an already polarized issue? There are no perfect answers, and arguing for either absolute open borders or indiscriminate deportation is unfeasible.
However, few immigrants choose to circumvent the law lightly. The "illegal" route to the United States is difficult, expensive, and dangerous—but it is often the fastest way to escape immediate harm, a role the United States has played a significant role in facilitating.
We cannot remove immigrants from U.S. history, nor can we remove the United States from the history of immigrants. If we continue to pursue foreign policies that ignore the past, we are bound to recreate the problems of the present. Moving forward requires discarding a rose-tinted view of U.S. policy in favor of developing sustainable, evidence-based solutions.
Isabel Papp is a summer fellow with The Fulcrum and a student at Northwestern University, double‑majoring in Journalism and Political Science. A bilingual journalist, she is a proactive, equity‑centered storyteller committed to elevating underrepresented voices.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.