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America first is not a slogan. It is the whole point.The meme says it plain. You cannot make America great again by pushing Americans to the back of the line so foreign nationals can be moved to the front.The numbers back the sentiment. The Federation for American Immigration Reform pegs the net annual cost of illegal immigration at $150.7 billion, roughly $1,156 pulled out of every American taxpayer's pocket each year. K-12 education for illegal alien children runs $78 billion, and healthcare adds another $42.7 billion. The Congressional Budget Office confirmed the math last summer, finding that the Biden-era surge population alone drains $9.2 billion more than it contributes.Then there is the jobs question. Harvard economist George Borjas has shown that every 10 percent increase in labor supply from immigration drops native wages by 3 to 4 percent. That hits hardest at the bottom, on the very Americans who need those paychecks most.And there is the culture question, which beltway consultants prefer to duck. Immigrants used to arrive planning to become Americans. They learned the language, took the oath, and left the old country behind. Manhattan Institute analysis of Census data shows that pattern has broken. Ethnic enclaves are being replenished faster than they can thin, Spanish-language media dominates entire markets, and roughly 1,500 registered Mexican hometown associations operate inside our borders specifically to maintain ties to towns south of the Rio Grande.John Jay wrote in Federalist No. 2 that Americans were "one united people," bound by shared principles, language, and habits. That common thread is what a nation is. Erase it and you have geography, not a country.Legal, vetted, assimilating immigrants have always been welcome here. That is not the fight. The fight is whether the citizens who built this country still get to keep it.