CHANGE: Columnist George Will Drops 50 Years of Support for Mass Migration.

Establishment oracle George Will has reversed himself after a career of praising mass migration, dating back to the Reagan administration.

Will’s sudden renunciation of establishment orthodoxy after 50 years of support for mass migration was signaled with a single adjective in his April 24 column, as he lamented slow population growth under President Donald Trump’s low migration policy:

There is one promising solution. Increasing skilled immigration into our nation [emphasis added].

Not “mass migration,” not even just “migration.” Will is now backing only “skilled migration.”

The shift to “skilled” is a big change for 84-year-old Will, whose carefully written nationwide op-ed columns have shaped Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Generation X since 1974.

His careful word choice of “skilled” implies a smaller-scale inflow of highly productive people who can complement, but not replace or sideline, the native wisdom, diligence, and productivity of America’s vast citizenry.

But Will has spent the last 50 years and eight presidencies praising the elite-engineered mass immigration that has changed the United States’ suburban station-wagon politics into a battleground for myriad counterproductive ethnic rivalries.

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people,” Milton Friedman once said. “The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”