We shouldn’t be surprised that the anti-American President Obama’s last year brought a record level of foreigner influx, as a major part of his destruction derby against the United States. He disapproves of the American people — particular the conservative ones — and used his presidency to overwhelm the traditional culture demographically and import a new people more accepting of liberal big government.

The Center for Immigration Studies analyzed the numbers and found that the legal and illegal immigration for 2016 was a record 1.8 million persons.

Chain migration grew alarmingly during the last decade and added to the catastrophic numbers. Steve Camarota of CIS remarked, “Our generous legal immigration system allows in a huge number of immigrants and then permits them to sponsor their relatives causing a multiplier effect. This chain migration has contributed to nearly 14 million immigrants settling here between 2006 to 2016.”

Increasing immigration is not the direction America should be going today — quite the contrary for many reasons.

The enormous number of foreign people residing here (more than 43 million) makes it possible for immigrants and illegal aliens to get by without speaking English. America has historically been good at assimilating immigrants, but the excessive numbers of foreigners are defeating cultural incorporation.

And while the human economy is booming today, the smart machines are coming on strong over the next few years, making immigrant workers worse than obsolete. If indeed the Oxford scholars’ automation forecast is correct and nearly half of jobs will be done by smart machines by 2033, then the unskilled, non-English-speaking immigrants may well become an angry underclass, susceptible to engaging in anti-social behavior. The optimal number of immigrants for the automated future is ZERO.

Here in California, an extremely dry start to the winter rainy season has been disturbing. Last year saw record rainfall ending the severe five-year drought, so the possibility of a return to the bad old days looks all too real. While much of the water supply goes to agricultural uses, the state population of 40 million — with over 10 million, or 27 percent of residents being foreign-born — is far higher than can be sustainably supported by a region that suffers periodic drought. In fact, the west experienced a series of Medieval mega-droughts from 900 to 1400, which is recent climatically speaking. California is FULL, and then some.

Below, the drought-stricken Lake Oroville (which is also a reservoir) was nearly empty in September 2014.

Large numbers of poor immigrants threaten America’s founding principles of limited government. As Ann Coulter has emphasized repeatedly, we shouldn’t be legalizing undocumented Democrats because it increases the growing welfare-prone sector who vote for big government every time (Let’s Start by Deporting the DREAMers! Breitbart.com, Dec. 25)

Here’s a Fox News video report about the increased stream of foreigners:

WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: I’ll tell you the findings will certainly be part of an upcoming debate in Congress over DACA and immigration reform. So the numbers include legal and illegal immigration, and it is based on the US Census: it shows 1.8 million new immigrants settling in the U.S. in 2016, highest level in US history and 53 percent higher than just five years ago, when the recession hit and many went home because they couldn’t find a job. Now this is for 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, when there was virtually no interior enforcement or worksite enforcement, no visa overstay prosecutions, and the border saw that surge of Central American women, children, families. The increase was also driven by more guest workers, more foreign students and a change that allowed the spouses of visa holders to work, which of course encouraged more relatives to join green card holders here in the US.

The original CIS report is here: 1.8 Million Immigrants Likely Arrived in 2016, Matching Highest Level in U.S. History.