When you say THIS president, it suggests that our last president did something different.
No 2023 statistics are yet available but the following compares the last 2 years of the Trump Administration with first 2 years of the Biden Administration:
Total Arrivals:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 6.4 million
Legal entries: 2.8 million
Apprehensions: 3.6 million
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 7.3 million
Legal entries: 2.4 million
Apprehensions: 4.9 million
Asylum Seekers:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 427,000
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 344,000
Refugee Admissions:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 57,000
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 17,800
Observations
Apprehensions:
Apprehensions increased under Biden, but are below the levels observed during the peak years of the Obama administration.
Asylum seekers:
The number of asylum seekers initially surged under Biden but has since declined. Overall Asylum seekers have increased significantly in recent years, with a peak under Trump in FY 2021.
Refugee admissions:
Refugee admissions remain significantly lower under Biden than Trump's early years.
Overall arrivals and legal entries have fluctuated over the past 20 years, with a peak in the mid-2000s and a decline since then.
The Asylum program needs to be revamped along with other immigration reforms. CONGRESS has the power to enact and amend immigration laws (who is eligible to immigrate to the United States, setting quotas for categories of immigrants, and creating pathways to citizenship). The extremists in both parties oversimplify the problem and fuel divisiveness which prevents Congress from legislating obvious reforms that the more responsible legislators on both sides of the aisle can agree are necessary. It's time we encourage/compel legislators to do the hard work of enacting informed, considered, meaningful bipartisan solutions to fix immigration policy rather than continue to to paralyze Congress with divisive identity politics.
haha, I worked with governments for years and my experience tells me that they don’t know how to produce accurate numbers and they routinely lie (see also inflation rates, banking stability, Ukraine, etc.)…
NB: numbers are murky depending on the source, but this is a basic outline for a quick survey.
Building The Wall: 2016 Trump promises an 800 mile Wall for southern border security. Funding and political gamesmanship prevented Trump from fulfilling this promise.
2016-2018 - planning, design and funding, start of construction - $1.5 billion allocated
2016-2020: Trump was able to build 47 new miles, and reconstruct 452 miles of existing barriers of the 800 mile Wall, approx $15 billion dollars from various sources was expended, and considered to be a DHS funded project
2018 - Democrats and Nancy Pelosi take over Congress and rejects any more funding of The Wall. Ongoing construction of The Wall is halted.
2019 - Trump declares the southern border a state of emergency, in an attempt to get emergency funding to continue the Wall; Trump tries to get $3.8 billion from military funding; rejected by Democrats
2020 - Biden states "not another foot of The Wall will be constructed". Biden sells off Wall construction materials already paid for and delivered at scrap prices.
Research and data (including the Libertarian Cato Institute - "Why the Wall Won't Work" (2017 and "A Wall Is an Impractical, Expensive, and Ineffective Border Plan" (2019) and "The Border Wall Didn't Work" (2022)) show very high cost and limited value of a wall on overall illegal immigration flows.
Potential for bipartisanship - Funding for border security increased significantly under both Obama and Biden and Democrats have supported increased investment in technology, personnel, and infrastructure. Reducing illegal immigration and enabling legal immigration and pathways for citizenship should work tofether to create a comprehensive policy that allows the US to maximize the economic benefits of immigration and minimize the costs of enforcement.
Growing the numbers of new government employees is never cost effective. Retrain and reassign government employees we already have to provide this increased border security work. The matter is urgent and should be prioritized. Finish The Wall. Walls do work. They concentrate the flow, for proper processing. Cato Institute arguments are a non-starter. Leaky borders are non-borders.
Sabotage The Wall has been the sole agenda these past 6 years of the Democrat/Biden majority. Your own statistics indicate even the rudimentary, stillborn Trump Wall was showing better numbers, than we have now. What exactly is the Democrat payoff for open borders, now that we have your attention.
Why has legal immigration reform been so difficult under any administration. Let both sides take the blame for what is not working today. There was a Wall and Amnesty agreement under Reagan decades ago that was later sabotaged - amnesty yes; building the required Wall, no.
Biden had the House and the Senate for his first two years under his control, and he did nothing. Worse than nothing. At least Trump during his first two years got The Wall project re-started. Finish the Wall - long overdue. Remain in Mexico. Strengthen requirements for asylum applications so the current misuse of this option no longer over-burdens border personnel. Require application in the first neutral country any asylum applicant travels to.
Strict liability deportation for any who fail to show up for their required US hearings. It is a privilege to come to America; not a right. There is no justification for illegal line-jumping, in front of those waiting patiently for their own legal chance to live here.
BTW: I was a guest worker in a foreign country for several years. Never once did I consider making demands on my host country. Never once did I consider over-staying my legal visa. Consequently, I struggle with this current state of affairs. I believe in sovereign borders. I believe in legal immigration. Call me retro-Westphalian.
The debate about The Wall continues - even in-house:
....... "The Immigration Reform Law Institute has obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, an internal audit report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (OIG), regarding the most effective measures for curbing illegal immigration at the U.S.- Mexico border.
For every area of the Southwest border examined, the audit determined that a physical barrier was not only the best option for disrupting irregular migration, but also the most cost-effective, as compared to alternatives such as electronic sensors.
The results of this OIG investigation call into question President Joe Biden’s decision to abruptly stop construction of the border wall begun during the Trump administration. ........."
My understanding is that the Audit is not yet public. So I don't know whether the statement above is true or not. But - to all of you - barriers are PART of a solution. Not a solution in and of itself. For a slew of environmental, practical, legal, budgetary, and water navigation issues, a contiguous, humpty dumpty wall across the entire southern border is not gonna' happen. If you want to improve and increase barriers, improve and speed-up adjudication of legal claims and prevent mis-use of claims of asylum ... I think you will find a large swath of Democrats who will work with a large swath of moderate Republicans to create a more effective immigration system (that will significantly reduce illegal immigration - not only across the southern border but also of the likely larger number who are simply flying into international airports and overstaying visas. But if you just want to MIS-CHARACTERIZE people on the other side of the isle as being for "open borders" (a few extremists may but certainly not the bulk of Democrats and it's unproductive to paint (all) Democrats with that brush). Their reaction is going to be to MIS-CHARACTERIZE most of you (as racist, xenophobic, Authoritarian ... and some extremists are but certainly not the bulk of you). The BIG issues (Immigration reform, Healthcare, Education), the ones that are critical to our long term well-being as a nation, can't be addressed by exchanging sound-bites or with a one dimensional solution like "build a wall". Each of these issues is HARD and COMPLEX and require serious thought, compromise, and more courageous representatives who are willing to take from their respective (relatively ignorant) constituent voters, and risk losing office in order to pass effective legislation. But if we are all just going to name-call in short format forums, it just fuels animosity and stifles the critical thinking that we need to apply to these issues.
Build the Wall. We can multi-task. Work on those other issues too. But this is not an either/or. proposition. It is a completion of the Reagan promise from decades ago. The Wall will be built. Chill the slurs and the insults coming from those who don't want the Wall built.
Clicked on your link: I'm not sure what stat you were taking us to, but the first statement was, "In the fiscal year of 2022, there were 2,214,652 alien apprehensions and expulsions registered by the United States Border Patrol - a significant increase from the previous fiscal year when there were 1,662,167 registered alien apprehensions." I'm not sure what your point is. When we have MORE APPREHENSIONS/EXPULSIONS that means that we are interdicting illegal crossings. That's a good thing.
They (statistica) switched it to paywall. It was a graph showing border interdictions for the last 20 years and lowest under Trump and then exploding exponentially under Biden.
If you believe that the number of interdictions being higher (by 5-10x) means less illegal aliens getting into the country; I can’t explain it to. You are too far gone down the rabbit hole. You also need to understand the new definitions of “interdiction” under Biden. It no longer means “catch and deport” it has now become “catch and release” which means even those numbers you did see have significant meaning.
Just FYI ... If you want to actually move the needle on the problem, dispense with the snark. I know it feels good but it makes the recipient less receptive to the quality of your opinion and the data.
I started my comments by agreeing that we have a problem with immigration policy (a problem that has spanned many administrations). Congress has to fix and I'm interested - as I'm sure you are - in pushing a Congress that has become almost entirely dysfunctional with division to pass some effective legislation to improve it. Even if we don't necessarily characterize the problem the same way or agree on the solution, we should both be on the side of pressing Congress to engage on this.
A primary way many new arrivals become US taxpayer "dependents":
"The US Supreme Court decided in 1982 (Plyler v. Doe) that non-citizen children of illegal immigrants (children born in another country and brought into the U.S. by their illegal immigrant parents) must be given a free K-12 education."
good summary…likely 18,000,000 have entered our great nation since Biden took office (all borders + all modes)…what pResident would open the border and severely hamper energy production on Day 1…Biden is compromised and they are running a color revolution with his assistance…
When you say THIS president, it suggests that our last president did something different.
No 2023 statistics are yet available but the following compares the last 2 years of the Trump Administration with first 2 years of the Biden Administration:
Total Arrivals:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 6.4 million
Legal entries: 2.8 million
Apprehensions: 3.6 million
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 7.3 million
Legal entries: 2.4 million
Apprehensions: 4.9 million
Asylum Seekers:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 427,000
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 344,000
Refugee Admissions:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 57,000
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 17,800
Observations
Apprehensions:
Apprehensions increased under Biden, but are below the levels observed during the peak years of the Obama administration.
Asylum seekers:
The number of asylum seekers initially surged under Biden but has since declined. Overall Asylum seekers have increased significantly in recent years, with a peak under Trump in FY 2021.
Refugee admissions:
Refugee admissions remain significantly lower under Biden than Trump's early years.
Overall arrivals and legal entries have fluctuated over the past 20 years, with a peak in the mid-2000s and a decline since then.
The Asylum program needs to be revamped along with other immigration reforms. CONGRESS has the power to enact and amend immigration laws (who is eligible to immigrate to the United States, setting quotas for categories of immigrants, and creating pathways to citizenship). The extremists in both parties oversimplify the problem and fuel divisiveness which prevents Congress from legislating obvious reforms that the more responsible legislators on both sides of the aisle can agree are necessary. It's time we encourage/compel legislators to do the hard work of enacting informed, considered, meaningful bipartisan solutions to fix immigration policy rather than continue to to paralyze Congress with divisive identity politics.
haha, I worked with governments for years and my experience tells me that they don’t know how to produce accurate numbers and they routinely lie (see also inflation rates, banking stability, Ukraine, etc.)…
NB: numbers are murky depending on the source, but this is a basic outline for a quick survey.
Building The Wall: 2016 Trump promises an 800 mile Wall for southern border security. Funding and political gamesmanship prevented Trump from fulfilling this promise.
2016-2018 - planning, design and funding, start of construction - $1.5 billion allocated
2016-2020: Trump was able to build 47 new miles, and reconstruct 452 miles of existing barriers of the 800 mile Wall, approx $15 billion dollars from various sources was expended, and considered to be a DHS funded project
2018 - Democrats and Nancy Pelosi take over Congress and rejects any more funding of The Wall. Ongoing construction of The Wall is halted.
2019 - Trump declares the southern border a state of emergency, in an attempt to get emergency funding to continue the Wall; Trump tries to get $3.8 billion from military funding; rejected by Democrats
2020 - Biden states "not another foot of The Wall will be constructed". Biden sells off Wall construction materials already paid for and delivered at scrap prices.
Research and data (including the Libertarian Cato Institute - "Why the Wall Won't Work" (2017 and "A Wall Is an Impractical, Expensive, and Ineffective Border Plan" (2019) and "The Border Wall Didn't Work" (2022)) show very high cost and limited value of a wall on overall illegal immigration flows.
Potential for bipartisanship - Funding for border security increased significantly under both Obama and Biden and Democrats have supported increased investment in technology, personnel, and infrastructure. Reducing illegal immigration and enabling legal immigration and pathways for citizenship should work tofether to create a comprehensive policy that allows the US to maximize the economic benefits of immigration and minimize the costs of enforcement.
Growing the numbers of new government employees is never cost effective. Retrain and reassign government employees we already have to provide this increased border security work. The matter is urgent and should be prioritized. Finish The Wall. Walls do work. They concentrate the flow, for proper processing. Cato Institute arguments are a non-starter. Leaky borders are non-borders.
Sabotage The Wall has been the sole agenda these past 6 years of the Democrat/Biden majority. Your own statistics indicate even the rudimentary, stillborn Trump Wall was showing better numbers, than we have now. What exactly is the Democrat payoff for open borders, now that we have your attention.
Why has legal immigration reform been so difficult under any administration. Let both sides take the blame for what is not working today. There was a Wall and Amnesty agreement under Reagan decades ago that was later sabotaged - amnesty yes; building the required Wall, no.
Biden had the House and the Senate for his first two years under his control, and he did nothing. Worse than nothing. At least Trump during his first two years got The Wall project re-started. Finish the Wall - long overdue. Remain in Mexico. Strengthen requirements for asylum applications so the current misuse of this option no longer over-burdens border personnel. Require application in the first neutral country any asylum applicant travels to.
Strict liability deportation for any who fail to show up for their required US hearings. It is a privilege to come to America; not a right. There is no justification for illegal line-jumping, in front of those waiting patiently for their own legal chance to live here.
BTW: I was a guest worker in a foreign country for several years. Never once did I consider making demands on my host country. Never once did I consider over-staying my legal visa. Consequently, I struggle with this current state of affairs. I believe in sovereign borders. I believe in legal immigration. Call me retro-Westphalian.
The debate about The Wall continues - even in-house:
....... "The Immigration Reform Law Institute has obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, an internal audit report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (OIG), regarding the most effective measures for curbing illegal immigration at the U.S.- Mexico border.
For every area of the Southwest border examined, the audit determined that a physical barrier was not only the best option for disrupting irregular migration, but also the most cost-effective, as compared to alternatives such as electronic sensors.
The results of this OIG investigation call into question President Joe Biden’s decision to abruptly stop construction of the border wall begun during the Trump administration. ........."
My understanding is that the Audit is not yet public. So I don't know whether the statement above is true or not. But - to all of you - barriers are PART of a solution. Not a solution in and of itself. For a slew of environmental, practical, legal, budgetary, and water navigation issues, a contiguous, humpty dumpty wall across the entire southern border is not gonna' happen. If you want to improve and increase barriers, improve and speed-up adjudication of legal claims and prevent mis-use of claims of asylum ... I think you will find a large swath of Democrats who will work with a large swath of moderate Republicans to create a more effective immigration system (that will significantly reduce illegal immigration - not only across the southern border but also of the likely larger number who are simply flying into international airports and overstaying visas. But if you just want to MIS-CHARACTERIZE people on the other side of the isle as being for "open borders" (a few extremists may but certainly not the bulk of Democrats and it's unproductive to paint (all) Democrats with that brush). Their reaction is going to be to MIS-CHARACTERIZE most of you (as racist, xenophobic, Authoritarian ... and some extremists are but certainly not the bulk of you). The BIG issues (Immigration reform, Healthcare, Education), the ones that are critical to our long term well-being as a nation, can't be addressed by exchanging sound-bites or with a one dimensional solution like "build a wall". Each of these issues is HARD and COMPLEX and require serious thought, compromise, and more courageous representatives who are willing to take from their respective (relatively ignorant) constituent voters, and risk losing office in order to pass effective legislation. But if we are all just going to name-call in short format forums, it just fuels animosity and stifles the critical thinking that we need to apply to these issues.
Build the Wall. We can multi-task. Work on those other issues too. But this is not an either/or. proposition. It is a completion of the Reagan promise from decades ago. The Wall will be built. Chill the slurs and the insults coming from those who don't want the Wall built.
Biden: Catch and Release?
Sins of omission here
“When you say THIS president, it suggests that our last president did something different.“
He did. By every measure. Nice try. Not confused by statistics play.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/329256/alien-apprehensions-registered-by-the-us-border-patrol/
Clicked on your link: I'm not sure what stat you were taking us to, but the first statement was, "In the fiscal year of 2022, there were 2,214,652 alien apprehensions and expulsions registered by the United States Border Patrol - a significant increase from the previous fiscal year when there were 1,662,167 registered alien apprehensions." I'm not sure what your point is. When we have MORE APPREHENSIONS/EXPULSIONS that means that we are interdicting illegal crossings. That's a good thing.
They (statistica) switched it to paywall. It was a graph showing border interdictions for the last 20 years and lowest under Trump and then exploding exponentially under Biden.
If you believe that the number of interdictions being higher (by 5-10x) means less illegal aliens getting into the country; I can’t explain it to. You are too far gone down the rabbit hole. You also need to understand the new definitions of “interdiction” under Biden. It no longer means “catch and deport” it has now become “catch and release” which means even those numbers you did see have significant meaning.
If only there was a way to transport them immediately to the cities and precincts that voted for this...
Just FYI ... If you want to actually move the needle on the problem, dispense with the snark. I know it feels good but it makes the recipient less receptive to the quality of your opinion and the data.
I started my comments by agreeing that we have a problem with immigration policy (a problem that has spanned many administrations). Congress has to fix and I'm interested - as I'm sure you are - in pushing a Congress that has become almost entirely dysfunctional with division to pass some effective legislation to improve it. Even if we don't necessarily characterize the problem the same way or agree on the solution, we should both be on the side of pressing Congress to engage on this.
A primary way many new arrivals become US taxpayer "dependents":
"The US Supreme Court decided in 1982 (Plyler v. Doe) that non-citizen children of illegal immigrants (children born in another country and brought into the U.S. by their illegal immigrant parents) must be given a free K-12 education."
good summary…likely 18,000,000 have entered our great nation since Biden took office (all borders + all modes)…what pResident would open the border and severely hamper energy production on Day 1…Biden is compromised and they are running a color revolution with his assistance…