American Citizens FIRST.

• Author: Cotton, Tom
• Position: NATIONAL AFFAIRS

IN 2016, for the first time in our nation's history, the American people elected as president someone with no high government experience--not a senator, congressman, governor, cabinet secretary, nor general. They did this, I believe, because they have lost faith in both the competence and the intentions of our governing class--of both parties. Government now takes nearly half of every dollar we earn and bosses us around in every aspect of life, yet cannot deliver basic services well.

Our working class--the "forgotten man," to use the phrase favored by former presidents Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt--has seen its wages stagnate, while the four richest counties in the U.S. are inside the Washington Beltway. The kids of the working class are those who chiefly fight our seemingly endless wars and police our streets, only to come in for criticism too often from the very elite who sleep under the blanket of security they provide.

Donald Trump understood these things, though I should add he did not cause them. His victory was more effect than cause of our present discontents. The multiplying failures and arrogance of our governing class are what created the conditions for his victory.

Immigration probably is the best example of this. Pres. Trump deviated from Republican orthodoxy on several issues, but immigration was the defining issue in which he broke from the bipartisan conventional wisdom. For years, all Democrats and many Republicans have agreed on the outline of what commonly is called "comprehensive immigration reform," which is Washington code for amnesty, mass immigration, and open borders in perpetuity.

This approach was embodied most recently in the so-called Gang of Eight bill in 2013. It passed the Senate, but thankfully we killed it in the House, which I consider among my chief accomplishments in Congress so far. Two members of the Gang of Eight ran for my party's nomination for president last year. Neither won a single statewide primary. Trump denounced the bill, and he won the nomination.

Likewise, Hillary Clinton campaigned not just for mass immigration, but on a policy of no deportations of anyone, ever, who is illegally present in our country. She also accused her opponent of racism and xenophobia. Yet, Donald Trump beat her by winning states that no Republican had won since the 1980s.

Clearly, immigration was an issue of signal importance in the election. That is because immigration is more than just another issue. It touches upon fundamental questions of citizenship, community, and identity. For too long, a bipartisan, cosmopolitan elite has dismissed the people's legitimate concerns about these things and put its own interests above the national interest.

No one captured this sensibility better than Pres. Barack Obama, when he famously called himself "a citizen of the world." With that phrase, he revealed a deep misunderstanding of citizenship. After all, "citizen" and "city" share the same Greek root word: citizenship by definition means that you belong to a particular political community. Yet, many of our elites share Mr. Obama's sensibility. They believe that American citizenship--real, actual citizenship--is meaningless, ought not be foreclosed to anyone, and ought not be the basis for distinctions between citizens and foreigners. You might say they think American exceptionalism lies in not making exceptions when it comes to citizenship.

This globalist mindset not only is foreign to most Americans, it is foreign to the American political tradition. Take the Declaration of Independence. Our cosmopolitan elites love to cite its stirring passages about the rights of mankind when they talk about immigration or refugees. They are not wrong to do so. Unlike any other country, America is an idea--but it is not only an idea. The U.S. is a real, particular place with real borders and real, flesh-and-blood people--and the Declaration tells us it was so from the very beginning.

Prior to those stirring passages about "unalienable Rights" and "Nature's God," in the Declaration's very first sentence, in fact, the Founders say it has become "necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands" that tie them to another--one people, not all people, not citizens of the world, but actual people who make up actual colonies. The Founders frequently use the words "we" and "us" throughout the Declaration to describe that people.

Furthermore, on several occasions, the Declaration speaks of "these Colonies" or "these States." The Founders were concerned about their own circumstances; they owed a duty to their own people who had sent them as representatives to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They were not trying to free South America from Spanish or Portuguese dominion, much as they might have opposed that dominion.

Perhaps most notably, the Founders explain towards the end of the Declaration that they had appealed not only to King George for redress, but to their fellow British...