Stephen Miller’s immigration agenda—advocating for “net-negative” migration, praising the 1924 Immigration Act, and pushing mass deportation infrastructure, did not emerge in a vacuum. His policy vision represents the culmination of a century-long ideological genealogy, traceable through specific organizations, figures, and intellectual traditions.
The Pioneer Fund: Scientific Racism’s Financial PipelineThe Pioneer Fund: Scientific Racism’s Financial Pipeline
The ideological foundation begins with the Pioneer Fund, established in 1937 to promote “race betterment” and study heredity among those of “pioneer stock.” The fund explicitly focused on three areas: eugenics, race-and-IQ research, and opposition to immigration.
The Pioneer Fund’s significance lies in its financial influence on policy advocacy. The fund bankrolled the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), founded in 1979 as the flagship organization lobbying for immigration cuts. This created a pipeline from 1930s racial theories to 1980s policy advocacy, helping build the modern anti-immigration movement’s infrastructure.
Thomas F. Ellis: Bridging WorldsThomas F. Ellis: Bridging Worlds
The connection between eugenic ideology and mainstream conservative politics crystallized through Thomas F. Ellis, chief strategist for Senator Jesse Helms. Ellis simultaneously served as a director of the Pioneer Fund while becoming president of the Council for National Policy (CNP) in 1982.
Through Ellis, concerns about maintaining racial homogeneity were repackaged as “traditional values” and “national security” within the CNP—a secretive coordinating body for conservative activists, religious leaders, and political financiers. His dual role allowed ideas to be reframed in more politically palatable terms.
The Council for National Policy: Strategic CoordinationThe Council for National Policy: Strategic Coordination
Founded in 1981, the CNP operated behind closed doors, forbidding public disclosure of its membership or discussions. Yet it served as the strategic nerve center where Pioneer Fund affiliates, Christian Right leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and political financiers coordinated agendas.
The CNP provided a forum where anti-immigration positions could be refined before reaching Republican platforms. Senator Jeff Sessions, a CNP member who praised the 1924 quota law, later hired Stephen Miller as his staffer. Miller absorbed these policy positions and later implemented them in the Trump White House.
Intellectual Framework: Buchanan, Huntington, and SpenglerIntellectual Framework: Buchanan, Huntington, and Spengler
Miller’s worldview draws from specific intellectuals who framed immigration as civilizational threat:
Pat Buchanan warned in The Death of the West (2001): “Western civilization” would not “survive the passing of the European peoples whose ancestors created it.” Miller later claimed electing his opponents would mean “the assisted suicide of Western civilization” and tweeted: “Import the Third World, become the Third World.” Steve Bannon confirmed Buchanan as one of Miller’s top intellectual inspirations.
Samuel Huntington argued in Who Are We? (2004) that Mexican immigration would result in “Hispanization” and erode national unity. When Miller claims the 1965 Immigration Act destroyed “social cohesion” and argues: “There cannot be social trust… a shared language, a shared culture” under current immigration, he directly echoes Huntington’s framework.
Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918-1922) provided apocalyptic framing about civilizations in decline. Miller describes America as “on the verge of dying” and Western civilization as “forever teetering on the edge of plunging into terminal decline.”
Policy Implementation: Miller’s AgendaPolicy Implementation: Miller’s Agenda
Miller’s documented policy positions include:
Net-Negative Migration: Miller has stated he wants “net-negative” immigration—more people leaving than entering. He favorably cited the 1924-1965 era when “immigration was net negative,” suggesting this period coincided with American greatness.
Revival of Ethnic Quotas: Miller praised President Coolidge for the 1924 Immigration Act, calling it part of America’s “heritage.” That law tied immigration quotas to the 1890 population, deliberately favoring Northern and Western Europeans. Miller’s stated goal is to “unmake the world the 1965 Act created”—the law that abolished race-based quotas.
Prioritizing White Refugees: Under Miller’s influence, the Trump administration slashed annual refugee admissions from 125,000 to 7,500—reserving a majority of slots for white South African farmers (Afrikaners). In 2025, Trump signed an executive order classifying Afrikaners as a persecuted “ethnic minority.”
Dismantling Humanitarian Protections: Miller worked to end Temporary Protected Status for eight war-torn countries (affecting over 1 million people), suspend asylum applications, and restrict immigration from 19 countries.
Mass Deportation Infrastructure: Miller pushed plans to build “vast warehouses” to hold immigrants and conduct sweeping raids. Project 2025,
which Miller helped advise, calls to “maximize the deportation of removable aliens,” “end birthright citizenship,” and “dismantle the asylum system.”
Modern Institutionalization: Project 2025Modern Institutionalization: Project 2025
The Heritage Foundation led Project 2025, a 900-page blueprint assembled with input from 140+ former Trump officials. Miller “led an interest group that advised Project 2025 on policy.”
The immigration chapter explicitly calls to “target immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids,” “end birthright citizenship,” “separate families,” and “dismantle the asylum system”—formalizing Miller’s policy vision into bureaucratic action plans.
The Federalist Society provided complementary legal frameworks. Members like John Eastman argued the 14th Amendment doesn’t guarantee citizenship to children of non-citizens born on U.S. soil, a once-fringe theory now central to Miller’s agenda.
The Family Irony: Miller’s Immigrant AncestryThe Family Irony: Miller’s Immigrant Ancestry
Miller’s great-great-grandfather Wolf Leib Glosser arrived at Ellis Island in 1903, fleeing pogroms in what is now Belarus. As documented in A Precious Legacy by Miller’s grandmother Ruth Glosser, the family escaped before the 1924 Immigration Act “slammed the doors” on Eastern European Jews.
The 1924 Act—which Miller has praised—explicitly aimed to keep out Southern and Eastern Europeans, including Jews. Those who remained in the Glosser family’s hometown “were murdered by the Nazis” during the Holocaust.
In 1920s America, nativists declared Eastern European Jews “fundamentally unfit” to assimilate—the same type of civilizational arguments Miller now deploys. Miller’s uncle David Glosser publicly rebuked him in 2018: “Stephen and I were fed such stories” of the family’s escape, “and we swore in our hearts that we would never allow bigotry to destroy American tolerance.”
Miller’s cousin Alisa Kasmer stated in 2025: “We’re Jewish – we grew up knowing how hated we were just for existing. Now [Stephen] is trying to take away the exact thing that his own family benefited from.”
Conclusion: A Century-Long ArcConclusion: A Century-Long Arc
Stephen Miller’s immigration agenda represents the institutional manifestation of a documented ideological lineage: from the Pioneer Fund’s 1930s eugenics, through Thomas Ellis’s 1980s bridge-building in the CNP, amplified by Buchanan’s and Huntington’s frameworks, and now codified in Project 2025.
The genealogy reveals how scientific racism evolved into different rhetorical frameworks, how eugenic concerns became “cultural preservation” arguments, and how explicit racial quotas transformed into civilizational threat narratives.
Miller stands at the end of this chain, implementing ideas that, a century ago, would have prevented his own family’s survival, a historical irony that underscores the cyclical nature of restrictionist ideology and its human costs.