Even though most Americans now know their country has a serious illegal immigration problem, few are demanding to know how we got here or what we can do to repair the damage. Even people at the highest levels of our government have accepted false narratives about our current immigration nightmare. We must dispel these narratives before we can solve the problem.

Perhaps the most destructive of these false narratives is the assumption that immigration is a human rights issue—and one that America must address by granting access to aggrieved parties from all over the world. While it is true that there are some people suffering legitimate persecution by governments in their homelands, it is also true that asylum is the most exploited loophole in our immigration system.

Those wishing to take advantage of our asylum laws can simply repeat the “magic words” fed to them by immigration lawyers. This will get them through the first threshold to receive an asylum hearing. Nevertheless, even given the incredibly loose standards for these hearings, nearly three-quarters of asylum claims are rejected because they do not meet the required criteria. While the United States intends to be a safe harbor for people with authentic asylum cases, it is not required to accept massive fraud as a backdoor into the country. Asylum fraud is a serious problem that clogs up the system and wastes our resources, and it needs to be treated that way.

It is a sick farce to hear anti-borders politicians like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi lecture us on the need to accept unlimited numbers of foreign nationals, particularly when they point out the number of children trying to cross the U.S. southern border. The border policies these politicians advance creates the massive human trafficking pipeline that exploits untold numbers of children.

For all its alleged concern for migrant children, the Biden administration recently lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children who crossed the border without parents. Having entered the U.S. as pawns of the vicious Mexican cartels, those missing children are likely being sexually exploited, forced to work in nightmarish conditions, or worse. If there was real concern for the interests of migrant children, the better option would be to enforce our borders and shut down the human trafficking networks, not policies that enable these crimes through a porous border.

We also regularly hear that American culture is something of which we should be ashamed and that asking new arrivals to assimilate to it is close-minded and crass. While this may be a popular sentiment at well-heeled cocktail parties on the coasts, the reality is that America is becoming increasingly balkanized as more foreign nationals enter and form enclaves with little connective tissue to the rest of society.

Another false narrative is that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. “America is the richest country in the world,” the slogan goes, ignoring that we are actually more than $35 trillion in debt. Given our debt-driven “wealth,” can’t the country and its citizens easily endure the importation of the developing world to Main Street USA?

As it turns out, bringing in large numbers of foreign nationals, including gang members, drunk drivers, and petty criminals, comes with a body count. For every nonviolent migrant looking for better work prospects, there are too many who have spilled innocent blood. Kate Steinle, Molly Tibbetts, Dominic Durden, Drew Rosenberg, Laken Riley, and many more would be alive today if not for the mistaken belief that our current border policies are a boon instead of a liability to America. While most of the offenders in those cases have faced justice, the authors of the policies that allowed those offenders to be here are not held accountable. The result will be politicians lecturing grieving families about their lack of compassion for those here illegally.

Thanks in no small part to the nonstop anti-borders propaganda from cable news, pop culture, and political opportunists, many Americans have accepted these false narratives. In the process, they have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of government to act in the best interests of its citizens. There is no cogent argument to be made that runaway illegal immigration is in any way beneficial to American citizens and legal residents.  

The only way out of our current predicament starts with a full-throated rejection of these narratives and a demand for a government that prioritizes its own people, not one scouring the world for new and compliant voters.