There’s a “Border Crisis”?
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the year or so, you know that the United States, especially as of late, seems to be in a “border crisis” according to the President. In this case, the “border” is in reference to the southern border between the United States and Mexico. Like many others, this claim made me skeptical back when it was first made and I’m still fairly skeptical even now.
Immigration has been a part of the history of the United States for a long time. In fact, thanks to my grandmother who has extensively researched my family history, I know where my ancestors immigrated from, how they got here and even why they immigrated in some cases. This brings me to the question, what grounds are there for declaring a “border crisis”?
I really dislike reducing an issue down to two sides because I believe that there is often not one right answer. However, this is necessary for simplicity. Within this issue, the two arguments are simple. One side claims that there is indeed a border crisis that warrants restrictions at the border (like this week’s announcement that the White House may close the southern border completely) while the other side claims that there is no reason for such drastic restrictions at the border.
The data
To begin to answer this question in true information science fashion, I’m going to need some data. The Department of Homeland Security keeps some fairly extensive statistics available on their website. The data can be kind of messy, but that’s to be expected. Also, since this data did come from a government organization, some of this data should be taken with some amount of salt. For this analysis, I’ll be looking at a few data tables that the DHS provides. First, table 3 in the DHS Yearbook of Statistics details the country of last residence of immigrants who are entering the country and applying for citizenship. This data only covers metrics from 2000–2016.
Overall, annual immigration from Mexico has stayed in the 150,000–200,000 person range from 2000–2016. The biggest spike happened in 2002, just as the Homeland Security Act was passed. This act created the Department of Homeland Security and was passed as a result of the September 11 attacks. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are within DHS. After this act was passed, immigration into the United States saw a sharp decline and recovered in 2004. Since 2014, immigration of Mexico has been increasing, but the amount of people immigrating in 2016 is comparable to 2004–2008 levels. Of course, we don’t have data for 2017 onward, but the numbers don’t point to a crisis just yet. However, this data is for legal immigration into the US, and the border crisis is focused on illegal immigration into the US. As one can imagine, it is difficult to get accurate measurements of illegal immigration. DHS has started to do estimates, but there isn’t enough historical data to do a meaningful comparison. As seen in the chart above, immigration from Mexico did dip slightly after the Secure Fence Act was passed in 2006, but quickly rebounded.
Unfortunately, DHS does release information about what states immigrants become residents in by what country they came from. However, we can get close by looking at the top states for immigration and focusing on the ones that sit on the US-Mexico border.
Unsurprisingly, some of the most populous states have the most immigration. Even New York has seen an uptick in immigration since 2014. States like California and Texas are more likely to be receiving immigrants from the southern border and these states have seen an increase in immigration that looks similar to the increase that can be seen in the first chart.
What might give us a better idea of illegal immigration from Mexico is how many apprehensions were made of illegal immigrants. DHS provides this information by country of nationality:
Despite an increase in legal immigration, apprehensions of illegal immigrants have actually fallen to less than half of what they were a decade ago. Just like the other data only accounted for immigrants who entered the border legally, this data accounts for only illegal immigrants that were apprehended. There is still a population of immigrants that haven’t been accounted for — those who entered the country by illegal means and have not been apprehended. It is difficult to gauge whether or not the size of this population is significant.
So…is the crisis real?
It all depends on what you define as a “crisis”. Merriam-Webster defines it as “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending”. There isn’t much to substantiate the “unstable or crucial time” part of the definition. One side of the argument would say that we are in a crisis because of the influx of immigrants from Mexico and it would point to the decline in apprehensions as an indicator that more illegal immigrants reside within the US undetected. The other side of the argument would find the decrease in apprehensions and an increase in legal immigration as an indicator that more immigrants from Mexico are coming into the country using legal means rather than illegal means. Of course, there a probably a million arguments somewhere in the middle, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide where you stand.
