ANDREW NEIL: If Trump does win, it’ll be thanks to a simply staggering failure (and, really, Kamala should have seen it coming!)

If Donald Trump ends up back in the White House – which would make him the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1893 to serve two non-consecutive terms – his victory will depend on many factors.

A rosy view of the economy under Trump before the pandemic hit.

The punishing inflation of the Biden years, which plundered the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans every time they went to buy gas or groceries.

The inability of Kamala Harris — who suddenly spread across the American people when the Democratic elite decided to dump Joe Biden — to connect with voters or dispel the widespread idea that she was actually a bit of a loser.

But perhaps Trump owes this mainly to one issue: illegal immigration.

According to the Pew Research Center, six in 10 Americans consider immigration “very important” in deciding how to vote. Those most concerned about the issue overwhelmingly believe that Trump is more likely to address the issue than Harris.

Illegal immigration — sometimes euphemistically called “undocumented migration” by liberals — is the most visible failure of the Biden-Harris years.

It’s a failure on a staggering scale.

U.S. Border Patrol records “encounters” with migrants who enter the country illegally or attempt a legal route but are deemed inadmissible. Since Biden-Harris took office in January 2021, there have been a record 10 million such encounters, with the vast majority crossing the southwestern land border with Mexico. There were 2.4 million such encounters during the Trump years.

Trump claims that 21 million illegals entered America under Biden-Harris, but has never provided a source for that figure. It doesn’t matter. The official numbers are bad enough.

Crucially, they do not include those who sneaked into the country undetected, adding at least another 1.5 million to the 10 million known.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there were 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. as of January 2022. That’s probably an underestimate. The truth is that no one knows the real figure. Illegal immigrants do not advertise their address.

America is of course known as a country of immigrants. It will continue to welcome people from all over the world in large numbers for the foreseeable future. But the national consensus is overwhelmingly in favor checked immigration that is legal and orderly and that the country can easily absorb in numbers.

There is widespread anger that America has lost control of its borders and needs to get a grip on it.

The issue is especially toxic for Harris. Biden put her in charge of tightening the southern border in the early days of the administration. It was a bit of a Hail Mary pass, but she couldn’t help it: When asked months after her mission why she still hadn’t visited the southern border, she snipped that she hadn’t visited Europe either.

The truth is, she accomplished nothing as Biden’s “border czar.” She even denied ever having the job, although it is clear she did. As the 2024 elections approached, the government began issuing executive orders tightening border controls. The number of people crossing illegally has fallen.

But that just begs the question why such steps weren’t taken from the start. The reason is revealing.

Biden-Harris presided over a lax immigration regime because they thought it would appeal to the millions of Hispanic and Black voters who make up such a crucial part of the Democratic coalition. This just showed how little contact they had.

The recent arrivals, who have waited patiently to enter the country legally and who may now be struggling – in menial, minimum-wage jobs – to provide for their families, are the ones most angry about a massive influx of illegals, because it is their jobs that are most at risk.

The “let ’em all in” crowd of wealthy bloviators who dominate America’s broadcasters have nothing to lose. Their jobs are not at stake. But those in unskilled, low-wage jobs are right to be concerned, as unscrupulous employers could replace them with new migrants with even lower wages.

It’s a key reason why Trump is winning more Hispanic and black votes — especially among men — than is normal for a Republican, a shift in voting behavior that could make the difference between victory and defeat for Trump.

A recent NBC/Telemundo poll found support for Harris among Hispanics at 54 percent, compared to 40 percent for Trump. A 14-point lead may seem impressive, but at this stage of the 2020 campaign, Biden had a 36-point lead over Hispanics.

Trump doesn’t need a majority of Hispanic votes to win — just enough to make a difference in swing states that are so close that even the shift of just a few thousand votes could determine the outcome. Immigration could be exactly the issue that tilts things toward Trump by boosting his support among Hispanics and blacks.

MSNBC, the Democratic Party’s flagship broadcaster, was forced to confront this uncomfortable truth live last week when scores of Black and Hispanic voters in the swing state with the most Electoral College votes, Pennsylvania, made it clear that they were voting for Trump because they wanted a president who would take back control of the country’s borders.

Some complained that ‘illegal aliens’ would take their jobs. Others wondered aloud what the point of a legal immigration process if millions could break through it with impunity. Some even supported Trump’s policy of mass deportation of illegals (even though this is unlikely to ever happen).

I suspect the MSNBC anchors are still in shock.

There was a time when the massive influx of illegal migrants was largely a problem for struggling border states. Until their governors, like Greg Abbott of Texas, came up with the ingenious idea of ​​transporting the migrants to cities that Democratic mayors had properly declared were “sanctuary” cities that welcomed illegal migrants.

They quickly changed their tune as tens of thousands were dumped in downtown New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC and other cities. Soon the mayors begged the border states not to send more because they were already full. Boasting that New York is a haven cost it about $1.5 billion last year.

Moreover, people far from the border could now see the consequences of uncontrolled illegal migration on their own doorstep.

Texas alone has sent nearly 120,000 migrants to sanctuary cities across the country, including 45,000 to New York. The political fallout has been enormous, making illegal immigration a national issue.

Every morning I pass the iconic Roosevelt Hotel, where I stayed when I first visited America in 1976, in downtown Manhattan. It has been closed during the pandemic and is now used as a reception center and hostel for migrants. There is now an air of menace as men hang around aimlessly in groups, the entire block is now a scene of urban misery (on Madison Avenue!) and most of the stores in the area are closed and boarded up.

It is only natural that we feel sorry for the families who sit on the sidewalk with their suitcases and have nowhere to go. But there is also a response of anger at those who allowed the uncontrolled immigration that created these horrible conditions. As the campaign enters its final week, Harris is still struggling to come up with convincing answers.

America is not alone in having an immigrant problem that is changing the face of politics. It is a trend throughout the democratic world.

It appears the political career of Justin Trudeau, who has dominated Canadian politics for so long, but whose personal ratings are now in the tank due to his open-door immigration policy, is coming to an end. He has suddenly become an advocate of control, but too late to save his skin. It looks like Canada’s Conservative Party will win the next election and Trudeau’s Liberal Party doesn’t even want him to run again.

It has already contributed to the destruction of Britain’s Conservative Party, which found itself on the wrong side of a landslide in July – partly because, after promising that Brexit would bring immigration under control, they found themselves in charge of the strongest increase in immigration ever.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s anti-migrant National Rally has replaced the mainstream center-right party, which now barely exists. In Italy, anti-immigration Giorgia Meloni is prime minister of the most right-wing government since World War II. In Germany, mainstream center-right Christian Democrats have only maintained their relevance by focusing on robust immigration law.

There is no other problem today with anything like the power to disrupt established customs in democracies than immigration. And now the country may be on the verge of doing the same in the country created by immigrants. It still might not be enough to return Trump to power. But without that, he probably wouldn’t have a chance at a second win.