The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) released an analysis using U.S. Census Bureau data that shows the illegal alien population has ballooned since Joe Biden took office by one million, bringing the national overall total to 15.5 million at a taxpayer cost of $143.1 billion a year.
Just over the course of Biden’s first year as president the cost to taxpayers for the new one million illegals is $9.4 billion.
The summary of the FAIR report stated:
These staggering increases in both the size of the illegal alien population and the cost to the American public are a direct result of policies put in place since President Biden took office, concludes the report.
The report, “2021 Update: How Many Illegal Aliens Live in the United States?,” reveals how a slew of policy changes both at the border and in the interior of the country propelled rapid surges in both the magnitude and the costs of illegal immigration. Specifically, upon taking office, the Biden administration canceled agreements with Mexico and governments in Central America, and terminated border wall construction. These policies were effectively deterring new illegal immigration before President Biden came to office, and allowed for the expedited return of most of those caught entering the country illegally.
Similarly, the administration abandoned nearly all immigration enforcement in the interior of the country, resulting in record low numbers of illegal aliens who were removed from the country. Under these policies, which directly defy federal laws, nearly all illegal aliens in the U.S. are off-limits to apprehension by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is also severely constrained in where they can arrest even the small segment of the illegal population still subject to removal.
“President Biden and the people he appointed to key positions in his administration have pursued the most radical open-borders policies in the history of any sovereign nation, and these new numbers bear that out,” Dan Stein, president of FAIR, said in the announcement of the analysis, “If not for the COVID pandemic, which forced the administration to keep Title 42 in place last year, the additional influx and costs to American taxpayers would have been far greater.”
“Rather than reinstate effective border and interior enforcement policies, the administration is doubling down on its ruinous open-border policies and is set to end Title 42 on May 23. These new illegal alien population and cost estimates by FAIR, and the imminent removal of the last effective border enforcement mechanism, leave no doubt that unchecked illegal immigration and staggering cost burdens to the American public are the explicit goals of the Biden administration,” Stein said.
Fox News reported on the analysis:
FAIR claims that Biden “has effectively abolished the mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), preventing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from securing our southern border, and implementing measures that encourage mass illegal immigration.”
The report points to the narrowed interior enforcement, the ending of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), ending of border wall construction, continued designations of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and promising amnesty for illegal immigrants already in the country as part of an immigration reform proposal.
The report says the states with the most illegal immigrants are California (3.3 million), Texas (2.2 million), Florida (1.2 million) and New York (1.1 million.) The states with the fewest illegal immigrants are North Dakota and West Virginia, with 6,000 each.
The report said some businesses are seeking cheap labor now the country is opening back up following the coronavirus pandemic.
“Businesses are once again hiring, and many unscrupulous employers are using this as an opportunity to turn to reliably cheap labor to undercut the market and make up for lost profits resulting from economic shutdowns stemming from the pandemic,” the report stated. “These unethical hiring practices occur even though millions of Americans remain unemployed or underemployed.”
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