The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago

On Christmas Eve last year, I visited Luis and his wife, Maria, sleeping on the floor of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. They were two of the 51,000 migrants shipped by Texas Republicans to the Democratic city of Chicago as political pawns in the US presidential campaign. 

This Christmas Eve, they have their own apartment, jobs and a car. Luis has a bank account, a debit card, a social security card and a work permit. Like many of those bussed north as part of Texas governor Greg Abbott’s plan to “bring the border” to distant Democratic cities, these two twenty-something Latin American immigrants (whose names have been changed to protect them) have already been absorbed into US life. Many cities like Chicago “have seemed to settle into a new normal” after the crisis of huge unexpected migrant arrivals last year, Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, tells me.