US Customs and Border Protection reported southwest border apprehensions for the month of April earlier this week.
The numbers continue to show a border in crisis. Border Patrol apprehended 173,460 illegal crossers at the southwest border in April, the highest for the month since 2000 during the Clinton administration. In that month, Border Patrol detained 180,050 persons.
Based on prior years, January-April Border Patrol data would imply 1.0 - 1.2 million apprehensions for the year as a whole, similar to the 2004 - 2006 stretch.
And the numbers could go higher. In those years of crisis in the early 2000s, indeed for every year from 2000 to 2012 (with the exception of 2007, a year to bear in mind), April apprehensions were lower than those in March. This year, the trend is the opposite, with apprehensions rising 4,200 to April.
The data implies the reason.
An illegal border crosser coming to work in the US has a number of options for attempted entry. These include claiming to be a minor; entering accompanied by family, particularly children; or simply entering alone and taking one's chances with Border Patrol. The quickest, cheapest and least risky option is the entry of an adult male by himself -- if Border Patrol will allow him to enter the US interior. And this increasingly appears to be the case.
During the Trump border surge exactly two years ago, only 30% of those apprehended by Border Patrol were single adults traveling alone, and more than 60% of crossers came in family groups. The key to entry was bringing a child along. Those who arrived with children were let in; those without were largely expelled. Today, the numbers are exactly the opposite. In April, 62% of those apprehended were single adults and only 28% came in family groups. Clearly, entering alone today is far easier than during the Trump surge.
Moreover, the ratio of single adults to total apprehensions rose in April. In March, 57% of those apprehended were single adults; in April, this had risen to 62%, even as both the absolute and relative numbers of unaccompanied minors and families fell. In other words, in April, migrants were discovering that they needed neither to lie about their age nor bring along children to gain entry to the US interior. The data suggests entering the US interior has become easier even as the number of apprehensions continues to rise from already twenty-year highs.
This has any number of implications. The first concerns amnesty. Many analysts, including a number on this distribution list, have argued that granting amnesty to undocumented residents will no longer prompt a surge at the border, because all that ended in 2008. Given that we are now solidly tracking Clinton era numbers -- years when border apprehensions were at their highest -- no reasonable argument can be made that granting amnesty is unlikely to prompt illegal immigration. The US remains a huge draw for the undocumented, and anything that increases the appeal of entering -- for example, amnesty -- is likely to stimulate unauthorized border crossing. As a result, conservative and swing-state Democratic Senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are likely to treat amnesty as radioactive. They will be in line with public opinion. In a recent Harvard-Harris poll, 80% of respondents deemed illegal immigration to be a very or somewhat serious problem for the US, with 47% saying "very serious". (See more at CIS.) If the border continues to hemorrhage, the public mood will likely continue to deteriorate, and moderate Democrats willing to support any kind of amnesty will be hard to find. Paradoxically, weak border enforcement undermines the case for amnesty.
Second, our model suggests that about 100,000 to 150,000 illegal immigrants are managing to make it into the US interior every month under the current regime, including those the Biden administration is releasing into the country but who will never show up for their court dates. Readers will note that I called for an H2-M visa program which would have allowed in an extra 1 million migrant workers over three years, about 350,000 of which would be allocated for a single year, say, 2021. We are probably already close to that in terms of illegal immigration, and certainly will be by early July. The US is likely to gain at least 350,000 ultimately undocumented residents this year -- and perhaps a lot more. Under a market-based program, in April alone, the US Treasury could have netted $1 billion in visa fees which instead will have gone to the Mexican cartels. We could have had background checks and completed paperwork for everyone entering the country, and south Texas and Arizona could have been spared the chaos at the border. There is a much, much better alternative.
I have warned my friends at Heritage, CIS and FAIR that an insistence on absolute sovereignty at the border is a losing proposition. Right now, conservatives are getting creamed, not because they have to be, but because they are unwilling to confront the reality that it is virtually impossible to beat a black market. The central issue of illegal immigration is a border with wages four times higher on the nothern side than the southern side. Moreover, the US is desperately short of workers at the moment (another Biden special), but in any event, the country will suffer structural shortages in minimum wage categories for the balance of the decade. The migrant who can make it over the border will have a job, and with the incredible upward wage pressure at the low end, maybe a job paying eight times the wages of the Northern Triangle countries. We are not going to beat the black market in migrant labor. We have never beaten the black market in migrant labor, and frankly, have not beaten any other black market either.
Conservatives must come to grips with the sober reality that, if we want to end the chaos on the border and the abuse of our immigration system, we need to recognize the wage differentials at the border and integrate those into a migrant labor model which also delivers on the critical conservative objectives of safety, propriety, conformity and compensation. It's not hard to do, and the Biden administration, working with some key Republicans, should do it.
For now, though, the border continues to spin out of control, with little sign of improvement anytime soon.