We've known for years that the number of migrants entering the U.S. during Joe Biden's term was massive. New York Times reporters worked with government officials and outside experts to "analyze the magnitude of the recent immigration surge in the United States."
The results are nothing short of mind-blowing.
"The immigration surge since 2021 has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing even the levels of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Total net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — will likely exceed eight million people over the past four years, government statistics suggest. That number includes both legal and illegal immigration," begins the analysis.
According to data from the Census Bureau and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), net migration has never been anywhere close to 2 million for an extended period of time.
Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.
That’s a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. Even after taking into account today’s larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850.
A Goldman Sachs report based on government data shows that 60% of the 8 million people who entered the U.S. since Biden took office were illegal.
The increase in combined legal and illegal immigrants has caused the share of foreign-born U.S. residents to hit a record 15.2% in 2023, up from 13.6% in 2020.
The previous high for foreign-born U.S. residents was 14.8% in 1890.
“We’re a nation that says, ‘If you want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come,’” Biden said during his 2020 presidential campaign. Once in office, Biden said he wanted a "Safe, Orderly, and Humane Immigration System."
He loosened the rules on asylum that allowed ordinary border jumpers to claim they were "oppressed" and get in a five-year line to await judgment by an immigration judge.
Immigrants from several countries received "Temporary Protected Status," which allowed immigrants to live and work in the U.S.
Waiver after waiver of immigration law was granted, allowing hundreds of thousands of people into the U.S. Biden took most of these actions to alleviate the crush at the Southern border. These actions include not vetting sponsors who showed up to take unaccompanied children to Lord knows where forcing them to do Lord knows what.
The actions were not done out of "compassion." They were done to minimize the visuals at the border of thousands of immigrants trying to enter the U.S. In the end, it didn't work. Kamala Harris was forced to carry the political burden of Biden's ruinous, dangerous policies.
And with all the talk about lots of immigration enriching the nation, just who is it who's being "enriched"?
But high levels of immigration do have downsides, including the pressure on social services and increased competition for jobs. The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that wage growth for Americans who did not attend college will be lower than it otherwise would have been for the next few years because of the recent surge. On the flip side, higher immigration can reduce the cost of services and help Americans, many with higher incomes, who do not compete for jobs with immigrants
Bernard Yaros Jr., a lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, a research firm, described the recent increases as “something that we really haven’t seen in recent memory.” Mr. Yaros said that they had “helped cool wage growth.”
A real "safe, orderly, and humane" immigration system won't look like the chaos, mismanagement, and incompetence we've seen at the border over the last four years.
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