Charlie Kirk began his political life as a small-government libertarian, but gradually embraced an America-First, conservative view on migration that is built around the pocketbook and civic needs of young Americans.
“He was a representative of the young people in the marketplace of ideas,” said Gabe Guidarini, a student at the University of Dayton and chairman of the Ohio College Republican Federation. “He absolutely did contribute to the shift that we’ve seen on immigration issues, especially among young people.”
This shift was spotlighted by a September 1 tweet, where Kirk argued against Indian legal migration into Americans’ neighborhoods and workplaces via the costly H-1B visa program for mixed-skill migrants:
America does not need more visas for people from India. Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first.
The tweet was seen by 10 million people and got a massive positive response.
His focus on the needs of young Americans generated plenty of enemies, including among various pro-migration groups. For example, his support for curbs on H-1B visas even prompted emotional criticism from some people in India. The Indian nation scoops up roughly 75 percent of the lucrative visas, which were established in 1990 to reduce wage levels in the technology and science sectors.
Kirk’s gradual evolution from his origins as a billionaire-funded advocate for small government began around 2020, amid the mass migration loosed by deputies working for President Joe Biden. His views expanded in his face-to-face debates with many poorly informed students at U.S. universities, where he blended the students’ pocketbook concerns over the GOP’s focus on illegal immigration.
“He never turned his back on the early Turning Point messages of ‘Socialism Sucks” but what I recall him saying more frequently as of late was that young men can find a fulfilling life in family, faith, and posterity,” Ryan Girdusky, a political consultant, wrote shortly after Kirk’s murder.
The result was his increasing opposition to the wealth-shifting economic policy of Extraction Migration that has been pushed by the bipartisan establishment since 1990.
“An entire generation has economic resentment that they don’t own anything, they’re not getting married, they’re not having children, they’re depressed, they’re anxious, they’re staring at their screens all day long,” he said in August.
‘The number one thing I’m obsessed about is I want to live in a country where if a woman does not want to go to work [after] having to have a kid, she does not have to go work, and she can stay at home and raise those kids,” Kirk said. “We should all seek to build that country — it is good for men, it is good for women, it is good for kids … it is good for community.”
In one debate, a pro-migration advocate argued that the exclusion of migrants would force companies to pay higher wages to Americans in dairy jobs. Kirk agreed, saying, “We would have to pay them more, and we would see higher wages and the middle class in America would boom.”
He continued:
Well, I’m sure corporations fight against higher wages. That’s why they want a bunch of foreigners to take American jobs and keep wages low. They don’t want to pay their workers because it might decrease their profitability … I want people that work in the dairy industry or at Tyson Foods, or that work with their hands, to be able to flourish and buy a home and have an American way of life that is largely forgotten now for many of them.
In the same conversation, Kirk also rejected the “Nation of Immigrants” narrative created in the 1950s by pro-migration advocates. The question said: A pro-migration advocate said migrants want to “do good,” prompting Kirk to respond:
Kirk: It doesn’t matter if they want to do good, just send them back to their country. I mean, there’s a lot of Vietnamese that want to do good and come here, but they don’t live closer enough to border-jump. This is not their home. Go back to your home and go make Mexico great again.
Q. But they can’t necessarily [Make Mexico great] while the cartels are running the government. They have no upward mobility, and we sell the American dream [to a worldwide audience].
Kirk: Then go fix your country. Not my problem.
Q. Isn’t that the point of America?
Kirk: No …Is the point to bring a bunch of foreigners, or is the point to protect our own citizens? Is it “We the foreigners of the United States”? .. Were we founded by immigrants or founded by settlers? …. Settlers come to something not built. Immigrants come to something already built … You know the American dream I want sold is for all American-born kids to be able to own a home and have a family and have kids.
I’m sorry if the concerns of like a Third World or in Honduras is not my primary concern, The whole idea of a government is you put your people first. You don’t put the like compassionate narratives of someone in the Third World first. Our country is falling apart, most of you guys will not be able to own a home. You’re going be swimming in debt, medical debt, student loan debt, credit card debt. We’re sending hundreds billions of dollars to Ukraine. So, yeah, we should secure the border and put our put young people first and fulfill the social contract. Don’t worry about the Third World.
“Has the amount of illegals in this country made the country better for all people?” Kirk asked. “Why do we not put especially American 18-to 20-year-olds first? You guys get the last of everything. Instead, the abstractions of the regime seem to take priority.”
In 2021, he backed the argument that elites are gradually replacing Americans with imported populations. “It’s factual and it’s true,” he said.
Krik also called for a moratorium on migration, especially Muslim migration, saying in August:
America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that. But for the 50 — we have 55 million foreigners in this country, and I’m sure many of them are wonderful people, I’m sure. I’m sure some of them are ones that I know, but we’ve got to take a step back and say, guys, that you’re no longer a nation. You’re something else. You’re a colony.
Kirk’s youth-centered views on migration extended to the cost of housing:
“That a leading figure like Charlie Kirk was openly criticizing current immigration policy, whether H-1Bs or other aspects, is notable …[and a barometer of change,” Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News:
He was both a leader and an indicator of the shift in attitudes among younger Republicans and conservatives, as opposed to the older, more established Chamber of Commerce Republicans
The coming generations of Republicans and conservatives don’t accept the standard Chamber of Commerce / libertarian narrative on immigration. It’s not even just college students and 30-somethings. While the President [Donald Trump] is not really restrictionist and still has the mindset that lots of immigration is good, the generation after him — the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Governor of Florida, a bunch of senators who are younger and will be the top leaders — are all restrictionists. They want lower numbers.
“His increasingly sophisticated critique of immigration reflects broader trends among younger Americans,” Krikorian said.
Kirk built his political movement with his young-oriented populist messages — and his perspective and actions have helped shift national economic strategy away from the counterproductive policy of economic growth by migration.
“We’re going to need robots … to make our economy run because we do not have enough people,” Trump told Breitbart News in August, adding:
We have to get efficient … we’ll probably add to [the existing workforce] through robotically—it’s going to be robotically … It’s going to be big. Then, somebody is going to have to make the robots. The whole thing, it feeds on itself … we’re going to streamline things. We need efficiency.
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