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Economist Jan 2024
nearly 250,000 people crossed in November 2023 alone.
During Obama's first term yearly apprehensions averaged out at just 431,000, down from an average of 1.2m in the 1980s through to the early 2000s.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/01/24/americas-border-crisis-summarised-in-ten-charts
https://www.reddit.com/r/neutralnews/comments/1ab8ygn/comment/kjmuzbs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
A) immigration is way down from previous decades, including hitting a low not seen since the previous century in the last few years, B) most illegal immigration does not occur via the border, and C) the common metric pointed to is mostly repeats/the same people being counted multiple times as border enforcement is 20 times what the US had a few decades ago:
Immigration in recent years is nowhere near record highs. Net immigration 2022-2023 was 1.1M. During the 1990s it was ~2M/yr, and in many other years it was higher than now too (1950-2022 absolute numbers, see my first link for newer data released last month). And those are absolute numbers, so with the US population now 2.3x what it was in 1950, immigration rates now are correspondingly 2.3x lower.
In recent years the US saw its lowest number of immigrants in ~a third of a century: "A shortfall in immigration has become an economic problem for America - The real crisis is not border crossings but a shortage of new arrivals" (The Economist). During that period that US had its lowest immigration levels in ~a third of a century, Fox News ran huge numbers of pieces claiming that there was a border "crisis".
As we have increased border enforcement by many multiples, what is a record now is how many people we are "encountering" - but most of those "encounters" are actually (duplicate) people being counted more than once as they were "encountered" repeatedly. In actuality the number of repeats is even higher / the number of unique people is even lower than the official stats because if the same people are encountered 1 or more years since last time they are counted as unique people not a repeat.
As an analogy, if a government increased their budget for stop-and-frisk or speed traps by 20x, should people be surprised, or call it a crisis, if far more frisking or pulling over for speeding subsequently occurs?
Edit: Most illegal immigrantion does not occur via the border, but instead from people who flew in and did not leave when their visa expired, and it's been that way for many years - thanks u/Coldbeam
However, some people have been:
Conflating the number of "encounters" at the border (even though most encounters are repeats with the same person being counted multiple times) with the actual number of immigrants.
Conflating or falsely claiming that those legally following the asylum application process are an illegal or unauthorized immigrant.
Pointing to the large number of times we caught/turned away people at the border and simultaneously trying to claim that the US has open borders and no enforcement, or using the broad term "immigrants" when they are really referring to "encounters" and include the same people counted multiple times, etc.
The other record is the backlog of immigration court cases, partially or largely due to underfunding over quite a few years (and consequently the number of people legally in the US while they wait on their case). Properly funding immigration courts would go a long way to clearing the backlog, and then allowing those whose applications are rejected to be expelled, but Republicans have fought against this as they feel it's better for them if there is a record backlog. Source.
Each year the population of illegal immigrants can go up or down, such as from some arriving and others leaving. The number of illegal immigrants peaked around the end of George W. Bush's presidency and the most recent number of illegal immigrants is lower - and again, these are absolute figures so as the US has grown over the decades, the illegal immigrant share of the population would be correspondingly lower https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/
Even including immigration, US population growth last year (0.49%) was around the lowest in the last one or two centuries. With a "rapidly aging" US population and slowing US birth rate, immigrants will be more important to keeping America going, including that the US birth rate has fallen to 1.7, "which is below the replacement rate of 2.1 that is required for the U.S. population not to shrink without increases in immigration."
11. The states with the highest rates of immigrants are 1. California 2. New Jersey 3. New York.
12. In just over 1 year, hundreds of thousands -- more than 10% of the nation's entire annual net immigrant total -- was bused to or otherwise arrived in New York City which is the city with the highest density in the US, and one of the highest cost of living in the US, and which has a "unique right to shelter” law requiring the local government to provide shelter to those who don't have it, including the hundreds of thousands who have been sent or arrived in NYC between 2022 and 2023. (In comparison, no city in Texas is even in the top 100 densest US cities.) Are people surprised that sending massive numbers of immigrants to areas that are already the most crowded in America, and with some of the highest housing costs in the US, would cause overcrowding?
13. The state with the most illegal immigrants is California.
14. Some have also raised concerns over immigrants bringing crime, but immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born Americans -- more immigrants lowers crime rates.
15. If interested as well, a map of which countries have the highest rates of immigrants - the US is #39 globally.
16. The right's focus on immigration is not something that has only been since the 2020 election; for example, Trump implied most immigrants were bad people and said he wanted to build a wall since his 2016 campaign.
17. Most illegal immigration is visa overstays: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/683662691/where-does-illegal-immigration-mostly-occur-heres-what-the-data-tell-us
2024
MONEY: Texas has spent more than $124 million sending buses of migrants to sanctuary cities, according to records obtained by Nexstar. 2,245 buses year to date, an average of 45 migrants per bus.. Almost $1200/person. https://www.kxan.com/investigations/records-abbotts-migrant-busing-has-cost-texas-124-million/
Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024. After months of negotiations, a trio of Senate negotiators unveiled a $118 billion bipartisan agreement to overhaul some key Biden administration immigration policies. But the legislation is already hitting a brick wall in the House where GOP leaders are declaring it "dead on arrival."
Just over $20 billion for border provision, including expansions to existing policies and new policies. That includes $650 million for the border wall, approximately $4 billion to hire new asylum officers and additional funds to provide counsel for unaccompanied children.
$60.06 in security aid for Ukraine.
$14.1 billion in aid for Israel.
$10 billion in humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine, and "other populations caught in conflict zones."
$2.33 billion for refugees from the war in Ukraine.
$4.83 billion for allies to "deter aggression by the Chinese government" in the Indo-Pacific region.
2013
Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013
The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (Bill S.744)[2] was a proposed immigration reform bill introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) in the United States Senate.[3] The bill was co-sponsored by the other seven members of the "Gang of Eight", a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators who wrote and negotiated the bill. It was introduced in the Senate on April 16, 2013, during the 113th United States Congress. On June 27, 2013, the Senate passed the bill on 68-32 margin. The bill was not considered by United States House of Representatives and died in the 113th Congress.
If enacted, the bill would have made it possible for many undocumented immigrants to gain legal status and eventually citizenship. It would have increased border security by adding up to 40,000 border patrol agents. It also would have advanced talent-based immigration through a points-based immigration system. New visas were proposed in this legislation, including a visa for entrepreneurs and a W visa for lower skilled workers.[6] It also proposed new restrictions on H1B visa program to prevent its abuse and additional visas/green-cards for students with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees from U.S. institutions. The bill also included a $1.5 billion youth jobs program and repealed the Diversity Visa Lottery in favor of prospective legal immigrants who are already in the United States.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that this bill would have reduced the U.S. fiscal deficit by US$197 billion over 10 years and by $700 billion by 2033.[7] The Social Security Administration said that it would help add $276 billion in revenue over the next 10 years while costing only $33 billion.[8]
"I’ve made it clear and I’ll make it clear again, the House does not intend to take up the Senate bill," then-House Speaker John Boehner said July 2013. "The House is going to do its own job in developing an immigration bill."
2007
Republican Senate kills Bush's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. The bill tied tough border security and workplace enforcement measures to a plan to legalize an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, most from Latin America, and to create a temporary worker program sought by business groups. It also would have created a merit-based system for future immigrants, something conservative Republicans sought.
2006
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed in the Senate on May 25, 2006, along a 62-36 vote. The bill included provisions to strengthen border security with fencing, vehicle barriers, surveillance technology and more personnel; a new temporary worker visa category; and a path to legal status for immigrants in the country illegally if they met specific criteria.
Then-President George W. Bush commended the Senate "for passing bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform" and said he looked forward to working with both chambers.
But the bill was never taken up by the House. The House in December 2005 passed a separate bill with greater focus on border security and enforcement, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. That proposal narrowed in on employment eligibility verification; immigration fraud; and immigration enforcement authority at state and local levels. It did not include a guest worker program or the legalization of immigrants.
Instead of voting on the Senate bill, House Republican leaders held a series of summer "field hearings" to get the public to weigh in on controversial provisions in the Senate bill, which Republicans labeled as amnesty.
''Our No. 1 priority is to secure the border,'' then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, said in June 2006. "And right now I haven't heard a lot of pressure to have a path to citizenship.''
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