Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

For all the passion inspired by immigration, it had never before been the defining issue of a winning presidential campaign. In the 1992 Republican primary, the pundit Pat Buchanan challenged George H. W. Bush from the right by using immigration as the central plank of his campaign. He proposed a border wall and a five-year moratorium on legal immigration. Bush “is a globalist, and we are nationalists,” he announced on December 10, 1991, in New Hampshire. “When we take America back, we are going to make America great again, because there is nothing wrong with putting America first.” Buchanan didn’t win a single state primary, but he demonstrated that a nativist platform could appeal to about a third of Republican voters.