J. MICHAEL WALLER: [Mass immigration] is a long-term strategy to populate the target country or establish colonies within it, for the purpose of undermining, subverting, or overthrowing the target government, economic system, social system, culture, or all of the above.

One awaits news of the deportation of any of the estimated 60,000 disciplined, physically fit, military-age men from the People’s Republic of China who crossed in from Mexico during the Biden years. Sixty thousand men. That is the equivalent of six US Army divisions.  --J. Michael Waller

"What has escaped the public eye is the subversive dimension of weaponized migration: The purposeful mass movement of people to penetrate, disrupt, divide, burden, and destroy the target destination of settlement."

Excerpt from my new InFocus article. https://t.co/09vHv8eGHF pic.twitter.com/wRAzmFNmWG

— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) April 21, 2026

Some highlights. 

Governments and tribes of some of the most primitive countries weaponize emigration to prosperous lands with the intent to milk the host country’s generosity through demands, extortion, and criminal enterprises to send cash back home. 

And,  

The terminology is borrowed from a Spanish Civil War reference to a military operation that employs secret sympathizers and subversive agents behind enemy lines, who clandestinely undermine the government and aid the invading force. It is a long-term strategy to populate the target country or establish colonies within it, for the purpose of undermining, subverting, or overthrowing the target government, economic system, social system, culture, or all of the above.This type of migration, as Nathan D. Steger wrote in a 2016 Naval Postgraduate School study, “can range from overt and hostile in support of military operations to more clandestine or passive undertakings, such as espionage” or influencing political and social demographics. “Due to lengthy timeframes required to plan and execute fifth-column operations, people often dismiss evidence as imaginings of the conspiracy-minded who are quick to voice suspicions on politically sensitive and polarizing topics such as racism or immigration.” 

When I read some of these lines from Waller's brilliant essay, I go, "O, yeah, makes sense."

Fifth-column immigrants settle abroad to subvert the societies that welcome them, in support of a larger military or terrorist strategy. Their dual purposes are to feed off their hosts in their new countries while acting as ideological, political, and cultural vanguards for a foreign actor. Those vanguard forces impose discipline to dominate the immigrant community. They operate within the system to establish colonies and build the material, political, and legal support structures for their foreign subversive strategy.