“An unprecedented surge.” That’s how the Times is trumpeting the upswing in migration to America since 2021. The paper reports that the wave of newcomers “has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing even the levels of the late 1800s and early 1900s.” No wonder, the Times says, it was a major issue on Election Day. It suggests an opportunity for President-elect Trump to clamp down on illegal migration while opening the door wider to legals.

The numbers put out by the Times are certainly eye-opening. The net migration since 2001 “will likely exceed eight million people,” the Times says, including “both legal and illegal immigration.” That is certainly unprecedented: “Never before has annual net migration been close to two million for an extended period,” the Times adds, pointing to data from the Census Bureau and the Congressional Budget Office.

The scale of this surge surpasses “the peak years of Ellis Island traffic,” the Times says, even if one adjusts for the much larger total population some hundred years later. As a result, the percentage of the population born abroad has hit a record high: 15.2 percent. That mark was hit in the summer of 2023, the Times says, and has continued rising since then. The previous peak — 14.8 percent — was reached in 1890, though it stayed high for decades.

Until 1924, that is, when America passed what the Times calls “a tough new immigration law,” ushering in what it calls a “restrictive era” that lasted until 1965. The law set up a strict quota system, based on the population makeup in 1880, that limited immigration from Europe — and halted it entirely from Asia. “This legislation no doubt embodies the sentiments of a large majority of our people,” the Times said in an editorial in 1924. 

The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, in retrospect, marked an attempt to turn back the clock to a more homogeneous time as America was becoming a more diverse and pluralistic nation. Just over a century later, could America repeat the same error? In light of the contributions to America’s economy and culture from immigrants, it would be unwise to adopt the kind of cut-off on migration envisioned in the 1924 law. 

This is not to overlook today’s crisis of illegal immigration — which was not as much a factor in 1924, when America’s border was more or less open. One reason why the recent immigration wave proved so politically potent an issue for Candidate Trump, the Times says, is that, of the some 8 million “net migrants who came to the U.S. over the past four years, about five million — or 62 percent — were unauthorized.” That offers a path forward in the migration debate.

“Historically, in both the U.S. and other countries, very high levels of immigration often cause a political backlash that leads to new restrictions,” the Times says in its report today, noting that Trump campaigned on a vow “to impose even tougher border rules next year than Biden recently imposed,” and “a plan to deport millions of immigrants who entered the country illegally.” To make headway on immigration policy, though, action will be required in Congress.

The GOP’s narrow House majority, and the Senate filibuster, mean that bipartisanship is likely required to pass immigration reform. Democratic senators are already “acknowledging their party committed ‘political malpractice’ by bungling the issue of border security,” as the Hill reported, helping tilt the election to Trump. Does that suggest a moderate faction in the Democratic party could be prepared to treat with Trump on the issue of immigration?

If so, the logic would be for a potential deal that includes, say, a border wall and enforcement against illegal immigration while also keeping a door open for expanded, legal migration. Trump himself has spoken favorably of the need for authorized immigration: “We need people,” was how he put it. We certainly will if he gets his tax cuts — something for the 47th president and his critics to reckon as they seek to solve the immigration problem in the term ahead.