I wrote “One Billion Americans” during Donald Trump’s first term as president, without foreknowledge of what would occur during Joe Biden’s presidency.
As a result, the book doesn’t really have takes on the immigration policy questions that have been most salient over the past five years — years in which we’ve debated the procedural rights of people making asylum claims and the legitimacy of deporting undocumented immigrants who have not committed non-immigration crimes.
I have fairly conservative views on those issues and have been writing since the spring and summer of 2021 about my fear that the asylum debate would essentially swallow all of immigration…