 I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term replacement, if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate with new people, more obedient voters from the third world. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually. Let's just say it, that's true. If, look, if this was happening in your house, your parents adopted a bunch of new siblings and gave them brand new bikes. You would say to your siblings, you know, I think we're being replaced by kids that our parents love more. That's Tucker Carlson's summary of the great replacement theory, a trendy conspiracy theory that was echoed in ongoing comments from Republican members of Congress such as Matt Getz and at least the phonic of New York. She's run campaign ads accusing the Democrats of planning a permanent election insurrection by granting amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants who will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington. The great replacement theory is spectacularly wrong and asserting that the government is really going to create millions of new citizens overnight or that in the unlikely event that that actually happened, they will be obedient in voting for Democrats. Tucker and his pals are also really worried about the government giving all sorts of new and better and shinier stuff to immigrants, but he's got it backwards. Immigrants consume fewer welfare benefits than native-born Americans. And historically, when the U.S. has had an open door policy, there's no evidence that government spending has been greater than in the periods when immigration has really been restricted. The last truly major immigration law was passed in 1986 when Ronald Reagan signed bipartisan legislation that ultimately allowed 2.7 million illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, to gain citizenship. Since then, reform in Washington has proven elusive. Indeed, like George W. Bush's promise in the mid-2000s, Joe Biden's stated desire to provide a path to citizenship for 11 million illegals has gone exactly nowhere, partly because he's maintained and in some cases even expanded Donald Trump's terrible draconian immigration policies. But even if those immigrants somehow became citizens overnight, there's no reason to believe they'd automatically vote for Democrats and produce what Representative Stefanik calls that permanent liberal majority in Washington. Think about this, within a few years of Reagan's amnesty program, the GOP took control of the House for the first time in 40 years. More recently, between 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump made gains with every demographic group, except for white men. Who's getting replaced? In the 2004 election, George W. Bush grabbed 44% of the Hispanic vote, which was just five points off the 49% of the Hispanic vote he secured in the 1998 Texas governor race. Believers in the Great Replacement Theory might be surprised to learn that Greg Abbott won 44% of the Hispanic vote in his first run for the governor's mansion in 2014, and that Texas and Florida are not only the two fastest growing major states, but they are also major magnets for immigrants, and yet keep getting more and more Republican. There's at least one more thing to consider, too. Representative Stefanik and other replacement theorists routinely invade against reckless spending and the need to rein in government spending. Hooray, I'm with you on that. But here's the thing, higher levels of immigration seem to discourage big hikes in government spending. It was only after the United States closed its borders in the 1920s that government spending ratcheted up sky-high and stayed there. As Alex Narasta and Andresy Forrester of the Cato Institute have documented, between 1921 and 1968, restrictive immigration laws cut the percentage of the population that was foreign-born from 13% down to 4.8%. During that same period, though, the New Deal and Great Society programs caused government spending as a percentage of GDP to soar from 6.9% to 18.9%. That's a hike of 174%. Immigration laws were loosened up in 1968 and the foreign-born population started growing again, reaching almost 14% in 2017. Yet over that same time period, federal outlays as a percentage of GDP went from 18.9% to 20.4%. An increase of less than 8%. What explains this relative stinginess on the part of Americans? Americans may have been more tolerant of spending increases because closed immigration removed the politically effective immigrant welfare queen argument, according to Narasta and Forrester. Ironically, if proponents of the Great Replacement Theory really want to get government spending under control, they'd best start lobbying for more newcomers, including from countries whose descendants voted in bigger numbers for Donald Trump in 2020.