Vast and continually rising illegal immigration to the United States will play a significant role in the upcoming 2024 general election on Nov. 5, when voters will decide between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 2023 fiscal year report, the number of recorded illegal border crossings reached 3.7 million in 2021, nearly 4.8 million in 2022, and surged to 6.2 million in 2023, totaling 14.7 million over three years. The data does not include those illegal crossings not counted in government statistics, and those occurring in the year 2024 have yet to be counted.
Springfield, Ohio, a town of over 50,000, has seen a recent influx of 15,000 immigrants from Haiti, greatly altering the local residents’ way of life in a short timeframe. Viral reports that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield — widely panned but never reliably refuted by major media outlets — have drawn further attention to the broader issues of accommodating and assimilating vast numbers of new arrivals to America’s communities.
Americans list immigration as a top national concern
At the beginning of the year, a Harvard/Harris poll from Jan. 18 asked voters what they felt was the most important issue facing the United States.
Immigration came out as the top concern, with 35 percent of respondents identifying it as the primary issue. Inflation and rising prices ranked the second at 32 percent; economy and jobs ranked third at 25 percent; and crime and drugs were fourth, with 16 percent of those surveyed saying it was the most important issue affecting the nation.
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Foreign wars only made the list in regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which was ranked 15th in order of greatest concern.
A poll by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, released on Aug. 21, showed that 53 percent of respondents considered immigration “extremely important” in determining their vote. Meanwhile, 22 percent deemed it “moderately important,” and only 6 percent said it was “not important.”
Such surveys might come as a concern to the Democratic Party, which has long backed a pro-immigration stance. As of December 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies confirmed there are over 170 sanctuary cities and counties in the U.S., most if not all of them established at the behest of Democrat officials and activists.
New York, a major sanctuary city, has welcomed a large number of illegal immigrants. Cases involving illegal immigrants now account for over 75 percent of all criminal cases handled by the City’s judicial system.
The Heritage Foundation has been tracking the rise in crime rates linked to the increase in illegal immigration. According to a commentary published by the Foundation last July, nearly two-thirds of federal arrests involve illegal immigrants.
In a surprise development, Harris, who has held the portfolio for border security since assuming office and on whose watch millions of new illegal immigrants have entered the U.S., announced in an Aug. 29 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash that if she became president, she would push for comprehensive border legislation to tighten control over immigration.
Fiscal burdens of illegal immigration
On Jan. 11, Steven Camarota, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies, testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement.
Camarota’s testimony, titled “The Impact of Illegal Immigration on Social Services,” included the following points:
Illegal immigration is a net fiscal drain, meaning illegal immigrants receive more in government services than they pay in taxes. The primary cause is their lower educational levels, with 69 percent of adult illegal immigrants lacking education beyond high school (as compared to 35% of U.S.-born citizens). This results in lower average incomes and tax contributions.
Illegal immigrants make heavy use of welfare. Government data estimates that 59 percent of illegal immigrant households utilize one or more major welfare programs, compared to 39 percent of U.S.-born households.
The use of emergency medical services is another significant financial burden caused by illegal immigration. Previous studies show that in 2019, there were 5.8 million uninsured illegal immigrants, representing more than one-fifth of the uninsured population. The cost of providing care for them may reach $7 billion annually, a figure that is expected to rise further.
A report released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) this May showed that U.S. taxpayers spent $150.7 billion in 2023 on the millions of illegal immigrants allowed in by the Biden-Harris administration.
Nineteen U.S. states, including New York, have each spent over $1 billion on various measures related to illegal migrants.
Republican Senator and Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has decried the billions of dollars taken in taxes from American citizens to fund services for people who are in the United States illegally. He said that this money should instead have gone to investing in schools, police, fire departments, and struggling Americans.
Illegal immigration and the Democratic Party
On January 20, 2021, Biden’s first day in office, he signed an executive order halting the deportation of illegal immigrants by U.S. immigration enforcement agencies. Thereafter, Biden took hundreds of immigration-focused actions, dozens of which were aimed at reversing or eliminating policies from the previous Trump administration.
The ultimate result was a massive financial burden, especially for towns across the country already struggling with economic downturn. Since the summer of 2023, at least 14 Republican-controlled states have deployed troops or provided resources to support Texas’ “Operation Lone Star.”
As the election approaches and immigration threatens the Democrats’ chances of re-election, the Biden administration has scaled back its pro-immigration stance. This June 4, Biden signed a new immigration executive order stipulating that if the seven-day average number of illegal immigrants reached 2,500, asylum applications at the U.S.-Mexico border would be halted, and illegal immigrants would be automatically turned away. If that number dropped below 1,500, asylum applications would resume two weeks later.
However, lax border controls and rapid demographic change in the U.S. benefit the Democrats in state and federal elections, ensuring that illegal immigration will remain a heated topic of partisan disagreement.
At the beginning of 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court, at the Biden administration’s request, ruled on the Texas border issue, allowing federal law enforcement, including the Border Patrol, to enter border areas controlled by the Texas National Guard and to remove sections of barbed wire. In response, 25 Republican governors signed a joint letter supporting Texas Gov.Greg Abbott in opposing the Biden administration. Some media outlets speculated that the border crisis was threatening a second civil war.
On Feb. 13, House Republicans introduced a vote to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, blaming him for the record-breaking surge of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year. The impeachment vote fell short by one vote, with 214 in favor and 213 against.
Aaron Heitke, former chief of the San Diego Border Patrol, testifying before Congress on Sept. 19, accusing the Biden-Harris administration of covering up and exacerbating the border crisis. His revelations were shocking:
“Sectors were ordered to take in and process all the illegal aliens encountered on the border. The Border Patrol saw groups of hundreds and thousands coming into the United States and turning themselves in. These numbers pulled 80-90%, sometimes 100% of the agents on duty away from the border. Border Patrol zones across Texas, Arizona and California had no agent presence for weeks and months at a time. Those who did not want to be caught could simply walk in. We have no idea who and what entered our country over this time.”
Heitke also testified that senior officials pressured him and his colleagues to remain silent about the sharp increase in the number of illegal immigrants with terrorist ties crossing the border. This was because the administration wanted the public to believe there was no threat at the border.
Since the 2021 fiscal year, 382 foreign nationals on the terrorist watchlist have been apprehended illegally crossing the U.S. southwest border. Between the 2021 and 2023 fiscal years, the Department of Homeland Security released at least 99 individuals on the watchlist into the country.
On March 17, 2024, Mark E. Green, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, published an op-ed in National Review titled “Biden’s Border Crisis Is Also a Crime Crisis.” In it, he documented evidence that President Biden and Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refused to protect the border, triggering a new wave of crime nationwide.
Under Mayorkas’ non-enforcement policies, the number of illegal immigrant criminals arrested by ICE dropped significantly compared with the Trump administration. In the 2019 fiscal year, 86 percent of all administrative arrests targeted criminal aliens, rising to 90 percent in 2020. However, these numbers plummeted to 32 percent in 2022 and to 43 percent in 2023.
This “decline” occurred because under Mayorkas’ directives, many crimes committed by illegal immigrants were never recorded, as some jurisdictions refused to document or release this information.
