Blocking immigration will not make Trump’s America great again – for the US to shine, he must let it get browner

Here’s one reason Donald Trump seems perennially in a bad mood: he has probably figured out that the America he fantasizes about is out of his reach.

However many immigrants he manages to deport or prevent from entering the country, the white paradise he is promising his Maga base, free of Somalis, Mexican “rapists” and generally people from “shithole countries” – closer in hue to the America where he was born – is not his to offer.

He can, however, do a lot of damage. By doing his best to make the US unbearable both to foreigners and, more generally, people from ethnicities that do not mesh with his picture of the American family, Trump is not Making America Great Again. He is ensuring America will be smaller, older, weaker and easier to push around.

Even zeroing-out immigration altogether will be insufficient to restore the bygone America that Trump yearns for. Whatever he does to get rid of immigrants will not stop the non-Hispanic white footprint from shrinking.