Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw reminds us that the Biden administration is still touting the drop in illegal crossings at the border. A Politico story from early this month gave an account of the White House end zone dance about its “plan” to deal with the end of Title 42 working so well.
“The Department of Homeland Security said that since the lifting of the public health order known as Title 42 at midnight May 12, unlawful border crossings have plummeted by more than 70 percent. In a press release, the Biden administration cited its ‘execution’ of a plan that paired tough consequences for unlawful entry with an expansion of lawful pathways and processes for migrants in the hemisphere.”
It should be noted that the Biden administration altered the definition of “unlawful border crossing.” It vastly expanded legal pathways to enter the country, including the addition of a phone app that could be used to make an appointment with a border patrol agent.
They’re just as “illegal” as they were before because they still have to show up in front of an immigration judge and plead their case.
And the Border Patrol still counts those entries as an “encounter,” meaning that for the month of May, 204,000 illegal alien “encounters” occurred at the border.
As you can see, border encounters in the month of May were slightly lower than in the same month last year. (Approximately 200K versus 240K.) But that’s still 20K higher than in 2021 and nearly ten times higher than in 2020. And there are still four months left in the current fiscal year. We’re on track to still set another record. And even if we don’t we’ll still wind up well above two million, which is completely unacceptable.
Then there’s the issue of the demographics of all of these illegal border jumpers. We keep hearing about the plights of all of the families “seeking a fresh start in America.” Think of the children! And there definitely are some children crossing the border and what’s happening to them is a sin. But they don’t make up nearly the percentage of the total human flood that you’ve probably been led to believe. Check out these numbers.
“The vast majority of all of the people entering the country illegally are single adults, almost (but not quite) entirely comprised of young adult males,” Jazz writes. “Their numbers more than double those who were counted as being “individuals in a family unit.”
The “single adult male” narrative doesn’t have quite the pizazz of desperate families with little kids coming to the U.S. for a better life. I’m sure there are plenty of those folks trudging across the inhospitable desert to get here for a second chance, but the reality is what it’s always been: single men coming to America to look for work.
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