Before they fully embraced open borders during the Trump era, Democrats used to recognize the dangers of illegal immigration.

As recently as 20 years ago, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were using rhetoric that Democrats today would call "extreme."

Obama's lost common sense

In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, Obama called for reductions in illegal and legal immigration.

Obama lamented the impact of the "huge influx" that was then pouring into the country - an influx that would be called a trickle by today's standards.

And Obama acknowledged that immigration depresses wages for American workers and burdens public services.

“If this huge influx of mostly low-skill [sic] workers provides some benefits to the economy … it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans [and] puts strains on an already overburdened safety net," he wrote.

Biden too

But Obama wasn't the only Democrats to talk sense.

Bill Clinton famously denounced illegal immigration during his 1995 State of the Union and endorsed calls from Democrat Barbara Jordan, chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, to slash legal immigration by one-third.

Even Joe Biden - yes, that Biden - called for immigrants to assimilate and learn English.

And in eerily prescient comments from 2007, Biden warned that "sanctuary cities" inevitably turn into "dumps."

Crisis, or deliberate invasion?

Democrats are obviously more than capable of thinking rationally about immigration. What changed?

At some point, Democrats realized they could use immigrants for political advantage. They began to openly solicit migrants as future voters, while bragging about the demographic decline of the Republican party's older, white base.

Democrats spent Donald Trump's presidency mobilizing against his immigration agenda and doubling down on "sanctuary" policy to frustrate federal immigration enforcement.

President Biden was foremost among Trump's critics, blasting his agenda as "cruel" and inhumane.

On his first day in office, Biden delivered on a promise to unwind Trump's restrictive policies. The result was a massive, record-breaking flood of illegal immigration that has now become one of the top threats to Biden's re-election.

Now, after years of ignoring the crisis, Democrats are trying to shift blame onto Republicans.

But after eight years plus of open borders advocacy, Democrats might have some difficulty with that - especially when their opponent is Trump, the very man they denounced as "cruel" for wanting a secure border.

A recent poll found that a majority of Americans support Trump's border wall for the first time.