Hispanic Mass Immigration and Remigration

Operation Wetback in action

At White Papers, our core premise is that Western nations deserve to protect their sovereignty, their political institutions, and their founding demography, and to build a future free from interference by alien cultures or hostile elites. The reality is that the nations of the West are at risk. The peoples native to Europe and those that founded Western nations like America are at risk of becoming minorities in their homelands after decades of unwanted mass immigration, facilitated by our own elite political class. In some cases this was done for ideological reasons (globalism). In other cases, it was to drive down the cost of labor for short-term gains. The inevitable and necessary result of these anti-democratic immigration policies by the post-war liberal establishment is a growing political movement that has risen to reject the premise of continued mass immigration and, crucially, to reverse these trends.

Nationalists and patriots, more than anyone, know the data. They look at the graphs, charts and trends, and understand that, if we do nothing, The West is lost forever! But what can be done? Is it too late?

White Papers knows something CAN be done. Something MUST be done. We have advocated these changes for more than six years, and now that pro-Western parties are coming to power across our civilization—the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, France, and beyond, it is time to expand our vision of what can be done to reverse the anti-democratic project of mass immigration.

Remigration (also called repatriation) is simple. It is the return of recent immigrants, and many of their descendants who have failed to integrate into Western societies, to their respective homelands or perhaps third-party countries willing to take them. It is the policy most needed to correct the course of Western Civilization. Most importantly, though, it is a practical policy.

Westerners, even to our detriment, are some of the most welcoming and hospitable peoples on Earth. Repatriation must, therefore, happen in a peaceful and just manner which respects the dignity of those being asked and incentivized to leave our nations. Remigration is not inhumane or disparaging of other peoples.

A note regarding racial and ethnic terminology for this series: We realize that some terms are contentious. However, for the sake of simplicity and directness, we will be sticking with current Census Bureau terminology for these pieces rather than using novel language such as “Latinx.”

America’s demographics have changed radically since the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, and it feels appropriate that to begin by examining the largest group of recent immigrants and their descendants in the United States—the group America’s (thankfully declining) uniparty elites have imported in record numbers through both legal and illegal channels to change America’s demographic character: Hispanics (Mestizos, Latinos, et al). When the 1965 Immigration Act was passed the share of Hispanics in the United States were just 4% of the population at time of the 1960 census. At most, the Hispanic population would have increased to about 8%-10% today had the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (also known as the Hart-Celler Act) never passed, according to PEW research and our own demographic projections. The overwhelming majority of those Hispanics in such a scenario would NOT be immigrants or their descendants but true Hispanic Americans, i.e., the descendants of the populations present in the country when the Southwest was annexed. These are the Hispanos, Tejanos, Californios, Chicanos and others. Instead of modest, natural, population shifts that would have seen an extant community of Americans grow in size, the immigration legislation ushered through Congress has resulted in the Hispanic share of the American population surpassing 20% of the overall population.

Throughout this piece, there is a data point more relevant than any other: that 33% of all Hispanics, and 45% of Hispanic adults, in the United States are foreign-born and therefore already hold, or are eligible for, the citizenship of another country. This fact shines a light on the oft-repeated line that so many of these culturally alien groups from Latin America are “Americans” when the reality is that tens of millions are indeed foreign-born immigrants the American people never consented to admitting into this country. Another 34% of the Hispanic population of the United States are the children of immigrants. In total, more than 45.5 million of the 68 million Hispanics in the United States are first and second generation immigrants.

For certain, some if not many of these 45 million recent 1^st and 2^nd generation immigrants are law abiding, well integrated, self-sufficient individuals and families. They are good people, good neighbors, and patriotic about their adopted homeland. However, the reality remains that most are simply imported foreigners. They live in parallel societies, do not identify as Americans, and require huge levels of support from American taxpayers through the welfare state. Indeed, the 2024 SIPP survey as examined by the Center for Immigration studies found that 51% of legal immigrant households, 69% of illegal immigrant households, and 49% of naturalized citizen households rely upon the generosity of the American welfare state to make ends meet. More granular data published in 2026 showed that 57% of immigrant households from Latin America are using major welfare programs, including 59% of Mexican households in the US, 49% of Cuban households in the US, 68% of Dominican households in the US, and 63% of Honduran households in the US, to name but a few.

Data from the Center for Immigration Studies

The problem is also intergenerational. The same 2024 data examined by the Center for Immigration Studies found that while 70% of Hispanic immigrants would utilize the welfare state at some point, this number only slightly declined to 54% for second generation immigrants (their American-born children), and remained at 53% for the 3^rd generation (people whose grandparents immigrated to America). Americans never voted for this and would likely be in uproar if these figures were more widely known.

Americans must face the reality that if 57% of Hispanic immigrant households are indeed reliant upon public welfare and this persisted across generations then more than 15 million Hispanic immigrants should never have been admitted into this country to begin with, let alone made our “fellow Americans”. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was specifically designed to prevent this kind of welfare-based mass immigration but interpretations of this law allowed it to be hardly applied for decades. The only just way to undue this state of affairs is to reverse the tide on mass immigration and send these public charges, and their families, home.

Data from the Center for Immigration Studies

This is more than an argument about welfare and fiscal costs, though. The American people want to live in a unified, coherent, high-trust society like they have for generations and this simply cannot be achieved when immigrants and their descendants do not identify as Americans. 2020 data from the Pew Research Center shows that among Hispanics in the United States, just 14% state their primary identity is American. This increases to only 22% among second-generation Hispanics (those born here) and increases slightly to 33% among third-generation Hispanics (those with immigrant grandparents). What is most concerning about these trends is that they are in retrograde. Integration is getting worse, not better, as the Hispanic population of the United States grows. In 2013—when 14 million fewer Hispanics lived in the United States—the share of Hispanics who considered their primary identity to be American was 23% (9-points higher) while among second generation Hispanics, 30% considered themselves as Americans (7-points higher). Among the third generation, 59% considered themselves to be Americans before any other identity (26-points greater than today).

Mass immigration has so demographically transformed the United States that integration has become impossible. Immigrant populations and their American-born family members are maintaining parallel societies within the United States with their own political, economic, and cultural interests that oppose those of Americans. This is unacceptable and can only be resolved with a policy of remigration that tells the many, many, millions of unintegrated Hispanics in the United States that they are going to have to relocate to the country they identify with and leave Americans to live in peace in our own homeland.

Data from the Pew Research Center

Data from the Pew Research Center

There are numerous policy options available to remove unwanted foreign dependents from the United States: cancelling work visas, revoking citizenship from criminals, simple immigration enforcement for overstayers, and a broad administrative review of all citizenship applications since 1965 with a focus on welfare recipients. Many of these applications are already known to be fraudulent. We need only look back on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, also known as the “the Reagan amnesty,” which even current GOP policymakers will admit was riddled with fraudulent cases, 90% of which were approved.

Hispanics who obtained their citizenship through fraud or deceit, such as that mentioned above, would then have that citizenship revoked. Usefully, this precedent is already well established in American law, and a nationalist administration would not be taking any wildly unprecedented steps nor violating any norms by utilizing this fantastic precedent. The grounds for expansion of denaturalization are also being explored in Senator Erik Schmitt’s SCAM Act and Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) upcoming ASSIMILATION Act. These pieces of legislation are a great start, but more will be required. Namely, Congress is going to need to expand denaturalization to cover the Latin American (and other) immigrants who have relied heavily upon the American taxpayer. If immigrants came to this country and have relied upon Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, or any combination thereof for any reason aside from serious sickness or disability, they should be denaturalized and returned to their home countries. It is not the duty of the American people to host a permanent foreign-born welfare class. Were the American state to denaturalize and or deport all legal Hispanic immigrants who rely upon the welfare state (with an adjustment made for the genuinely sick, elderly & injured), it would result in about 11-12 million denaturalizations and deportations.

Next, the United States government should relinquish all claims of sovereignty and responsibility over Puerto Rico, recognizing it as a sovereign state. This is a policy that we have written about extensively and wish to see brought into being. We estimate that some 4 million first and second generation Puerto Ricans in the United States would return to their homeland.

There are also other demographics of recent Hispanic immigrants that have no right or claim to live in the United States, such as the children of illegal aliens. While it is self-evident that a pro-American government would deport the many tens of millions of illegal immigrants residing in the country (a figure that the American Federation for Immigration Reform estimated to be 18.6 million at the start of 2025), there remains the question of their children. The children of illegal immigrants born in the United States are American citizens by birthright, at least as the constitution is currently interpreted. This demographic of people, according to the most recent data we could find, numbers roughly 5 million people under the age of 18. These children would have to leave the nation with their parents. After all, children belong with their parents, and family separation is immoral.

The children of illegal immigrants are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, entitled to or already possess the citizenship of their parent’s country of origin, their homeland. The United States could reasonably de-naturalize this demographic as they left with their parents, and it would not turn them into stateless individuals. The policy aligns with the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and therefore would not violate international law or norms.

With estimates showing that 72-76% of illegal aliens are Hispanics, or about 12.3 million people, and assuming that the same figure holds true for their children, another 4.25 million people, we can assume that deportation and denaturalization policies aimed specifically at illegals and their children would result in upwards of 16.5 million deportations.

Through the enactment of all of the above policy recommendations a remigration oriented American government could reasonably remigrate as many as 23.4 million Hispanic immigrants/illegal aliens to their countries of origin and ancestral homelands without violating domestic or international legal and human rights norms. We took care to remove the 15% of Hispanics who are born to a US-born non-Hispanic spouse from this equation, as we do not want to break up the families of Americans. Still. this figure represents 34.4% of the current Hispanic population of the United States, and would not require unduly stripping anyone of their citizenship who acquired it fairly and with the best of intentions, nor stripping citizenship from persons who were born to legal residents, American citizens, or whom are already above the age of 18.

We want to address three other key factors. The logistics of deporting illegal aliens, the denaturalization of immigrants who have aided and abetted illegal immigration, and a voluntary remigration program for those immigrants and their descendants who do not identify as Americans and live in parallel societies.

Thus far we have not included the population of illegal immigrants in any of our numbers, aside from ones already naturalized (generally through amnesty or illicit methods) who would of course lose that citizenship for having broken American law by illegally entering the country or lying to obtain documentation. Regardless, the current illegal alien population is nearly impossible to accurately calculate, but it has significant demographic and policy implications. So, in an attempt to provide context we have the following information:

A Yale Study, which purposefully used the most conservative parameters possible, found that in 2018, there were likely more than 22 million illegal aliens in the United States. The more liberal projections in the study predicted as many as 30 million illegals were present in the US. A staggering number. But this is far from the full picture. This Yale figure is reinforced by the FAIR estimate that near 18.6 million illegal aliens live in the United States as of 2025.

How could the United States ever deport such huge populations? The initial response to these large numbers may be that the State could never deport such huge populations of people. That, however, could not be less accurate an assumption as the Trump administration is already proving.

We know largescale deportation is possible and has already been carried out by American authorities on previous occasions. Readers may recall that during the height of Operation Wetback in 1954 the United States government was able to deport a million Hispanics over the course of a single year. For more modern data we need only look back to 2000 when the United States government deported some 1.86 million individuals in a single fiscal year. These deportations did not strain Federal resources or the break the budget at the time and were carried out peaceably. The American State is the most well-resourced institution in human history, and the American economy one of the most resourceful in the world.

A coordinated program, carried out over the course of 12 or so years, could remove these populations with relative ease. To deport roughly two-and-a-half million people a year would increase the demand on US air traffic by less than 0.4% and would increase the legal traffic at the Southern land border by only 0.7% a year.

Many others, knowing they are no longer welcome in a more self-confident United States run by its founding European stock, would opt to voluntarily deport themselves. We need only look at the Trump administration for evidence. At the outset of Trump’s first term, the Justice Department recorded a 17% jump in voluntary deportations, though sadly this trend did not persist, as immigrants realized the administration was not serious in enforcing immigration policy. The second Trump administration has already begun experimenting with using mobile applications to assist illegals in self-deporting with FOX News reporting that 5,000 immigrants have already voluntarily departed the US in just a few weeks following the app’s launch.

Aside from deportation, compelled by the state or voluntarily undertaken, there are other policy changes which a government that truly puts America First could implement to increase returns of illegal and irregular immigrant departures without the direct intervention of immigration officials.

The policy changes required are rather straightforward. The first would be to make the E-Verify system mandatory for every employer, public or private, in the United States. This could be done in two ways: first by a direct legislative imperative that all institutions and employers must use the E-Verify system. But, a second more immediate route would be to require all Federal contractors, and any business that interacts with the Federal government, or which receives Federal tax dollars, must implement the E-Verify system. Currently Federal contractors need only use E-verify on employees who “work under federal contracts” rather than all employees. This must change.

The next necessary policy change focuses again on the Reagan Amnesty, the 1986 IRCA. This act contains a provision which makes it near impossible for prosecutors and Federal officials to take businesses to court whom employ illegal immigrants. This section (Section B) should and must be replaced, but this issue could be tackled more immediately by a nationalist government. The Attorney General could have the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issue a new opinion which more strictly reinterprets the provision to allow the prosecution of businessowners who employ illegal immigrants.

The President should then begin the process of firing all 93 Federal US Attorneys, which he is empowered to do at his discretion. He should then turn to filling these vacancies with new US Attorneys who will uphold the interpretative changes of the Attorney General. Some of this has gone on already under the new Trump administration, though we do not overlook the fact that the Senate is dragging its feet on more than 70 appointments to these positions and thereby blocking the president’s deportation agenda.

Finally, there are the groups of immigrants and their descendants who have facilitated illegal immigration. Facilitation of breaking American law by an immigrant should lead to that immigrant being expelled from the United States. A Pew study estimates 1.3 million US-born adults live with their illegal alien parents, and a further 3 million lawful immigrants reside in a household with illegal immigrants. The children of illegal immigrants are hardly “Americans” while immigrants who knowingly harbor illegal aliens are violating American law. We have already proposed the denaturalization of the children of illegal aliens, but we should also denaturalize and or deport the 3 million lawful immigrants who reside with an illegal alien. Assuming a similar share of 75% of Hispanics this would be a group of about 2.25 million people. If we assume overlap with the previous denaturalized group of welfare-dependent migrants, we can assume about 1.13 million more unique denaturalizations and or deportations of legal immigrants. This would increase the total number of potential Latin American deportees to roughly 24.5 million people or about 36% of the current Hispanic population.

Next, we present the necessary policy of voluntary remigration which we have championed for some years now. We have already established how few Hispanics in the United States identify as Americans or with America. They feel like an alien population, and the polling reflects this further. A 2024 poll by Monmouth University found that 45% of People of Color wanted to leave the United States as opposed to 27% of White Americans. Another poll conducted by the firm Harris in 2025 showed that 61% of Hispanics in the United States had considered moving abroad and 26% of them specifically cited a desire to relocate to Latin America. The generations most interested in moving were Gen Z at 63% and Millennials at 52%. Estimates show that 46% to 49% of Hispanics in the United State are Zoomers and Millennials. The most cited reasons for considering a move were a lower cost of living (49%), a dissatisfaction with American politics (48%), and a desire for a higher quality of life (43%). When asked the most important factors in considering a move 86% of those wanting to relocate cited the need to find somewhere with a more affordable cost of living. This data suggests in no uncertain terms that many Hispanic immigrants and their descendants would leave the United States and relocate to their own countries—or elsewhere in Latin America—if they were given the financial resources to do so.

We propose giving them those resources.

White Papers has proposed and continues to propose a $75,000 Remigration Grant be paid to those post-1965 immigrants and their descendants with American citizenship to leave the country if they so desire. If we assume that the 61% of Hispanics from the Harris poll were serious about relocating to some degree and we consider the fact most Hispanic Americans make only $20,000 to $28,000 per person per year, we can assume that a $75,000 relocation grant will be very enticing. We estimate that roughly 15.2 million more post-1965 Hispanic immigrants and their descendants would take a remigration payment and relocate abroad. This would cost the government roughly $800 billion including the logistics, but this is far cheaper than continuing to host such a large, foreign, discontented population that costs the US taxpayer upwards of $680 billion each year.

In total, we estimate that 58.4% of the current Hispanic population of the United States can be deported as illegals, denaturalized, or enticed to voluntarily remigrate. Of the 28.3 million remaining Hispanics in the country post-remigration, some 18-20 million would have pre-1965 roots and thus be those of the original, true Hispanic American communities that existed in the country before the Hart-Celler induced era of mass immigration. The other 8-10 million would be those post-1965 Hispanic immigrants and their descendants who have truly integrated, contributed, and identify first and foremost as Americans and not Mexicans, Cubans, Latinos, or some other foreign identity.

We cannot solve housing crises in California without remigration. We cannot reduce the burden on the state and federal budgets without remigration. We cannot coordinate full employment policies without remigration. We cannot expect to solve the issues of criminality and sexual violence without the large scale remigration of the worst elements of recent immigrant populations. Most importantly, we cannot secure a future where Americans, patriotic and loyal, remain the overwhelming majority of the population of the United States without a policy of remigration.

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