Whence cometh the conviction, in America and even more in Britain and Europe, that open borders is the only moral immigration policy? Of course, not everyone believes that, and many who do stop short of saying so. But the contrast between the rhetoric and policies of the first two decades of the century and those that have prevailed since President Donald Trump’s election is unmistakable.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, like the George Bushes, professed to want to enforce immigration laws. They decried the flood of illegals that crested in the prosperous decade before the financial crisis, and afterward saw with relief that the flow of illegals slowed.

As I wrote recently, careful projections of the illegal population estimate that it peaked at about 12 million in 2007, fell to about 10.5 million in 2019, then increased by about 4 million during the Joe Biden administration, which essentially opened the borders to the point of paying for illegals to live in New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, two short blocks from where Jamie Dimon’s JPMorganChase was constructing its $3 billion office tower.

The impetus for this policy came from something other than the usual elite economic argument that, as population growth is slowing, advanced countries need more workers to maintain........

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