Hi, I'm Steve Ballmer. I spent 34 years growing Microsoft,
10 years owning the LA Clippers basketball team.
I love computers, data and facts.
That's why I started USA Facts,
to help understand what our government is up to and
what's going on in America.
I'll share with you the facts and data,
all from our government. You make up your own mind
in this episode of Just the Facts
Immigration.
But first, a quick disclaimer.
As I talk, I do a lot of rounding of
numbers,
but the data you see on screen will be more
exact.
So now let's roll.
Please note, there's such a swirl of activity on this
issue.
Things might have changed since I recorded this in mid
June.
I can't predict the future,
but I'll be reading about it when it happens.
Most of us have an immigrant story.
My maternal grandparents came to the US from what was
then Russia,
and my father came from Switzerland.
What we're focused on here is how the immigration system
works today and what the data says about how many
immigrants we have coming into the country.
I've put things into three groups.
First, authorized immigrants whose visas offer no path to citizenship.
This includes people allowed here on a temporary basis to
work or attend school or to be with family.
While visas are also given to 10s of millions of
people each year,
visiting on a short term basis like vacation.
I'm going to focus on those who live here as
temporary residents of the United States.
Category two is authorized immigrants who have the opportunity to
follow a path to citizenship.
This includes those sponsored by a relative or employer,
as well as people who've been granted asylum or refugee
status.
Category three is unauthorized immigrants.
This is a government term that is a bit misleading
because as we've researched it,
I've learned that it included those who are here in
violation of our laws,
but also those who are here seeking asylum according to
laws as they have existed since
1980. As well as migrants who are pre approved to
come to the United States due to humanitarian crises like
what's happening in Haiti or Ukraine.
There are others in this unauthorized category that are actually
entitled to be in the country.
But more on this later.
OK, now that we have identified our immigration categories,
let's dig in. Group One.
In 2022, the federal government ordered just over 2 million
non immigrant visas that do not have a path to
citizenship
but do allow people to live temporarily in the United
States.
These visas include everything from temporary agricultural workers to the
H1B visas we would have used at Microsoft,
reserved for those who must have at least a
bachelor's degree. Foreign students took up another
700,000 visas. People coming here to join family is another
330,000 in Group 2. Those living here on an authorized
basis with the option of a path to citizenship
are the recipients of about
500,000 immigrant visas, granted mostly to those with a relative
who is a citizen who lives here.
Some of these visas also go to immigrants who are
coming here for work,
who are adopted, or who are among the
50,000 people who win a spot from the annual global
lottery held to diversify
America's immigrant pool. Once these visa recipients arrive in the
United States,
they're transferred to green card status.
In 2022, there was also an additional
500,000 immigrants who received green cards who are already in
the United States.
That's the so-called adjustment of status.
A green card is kind of like
Willy Wonka's golden ticket. If you're an immigrant,
it allows you to stay in the US for up
to 10 years before you need to renew it,
and it does provide a path to citizenship.
Refugees are approved to come here while abroad,
and about 26,000 of them came to the United States
in
2022. Another 37,000 people who are already in the United
States were granted asylum.
Both refugees and asylees can apply for a green card.
In 2022, about a million people became United States citizens.
Let's do a Fact Check on authorized immigration.
Based on the 2022 data,
2 million people came without a path to citizenship
and 500,000 people arrived with a path.
Add in people who were granted asylum and you get
to
2.6 million new authorized residents
Group 3. Unauthorized immigrants. What is an unauthorized immigrant?
Some examples. People who snuck into the country undetected
or snuck into the country but then later asked for
asylum.
People who came to custom officials at the border and
asked for asylum,
people who have come here from somewhere in turmoil like
Ukraine,
and people who have overstayed their temporary visas.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that the total unauthorized
population living in the United States in
2022, the most recent number,
is around 11 million people.
In 2010, that estimate was actually higher,
11.6 million people. When our Customs and Border Protection officials
intercept someone coming through an official point of entry,
or when they apprehend someone who snuck in between lawful
points of entries,
they call that a border encounter.
There were 3.2 million total border encounters in
2023. Of those, two and a half million,
or 77%, were at the southwest border.
Another
392,000 people came through airports,
189,000 people through the northern border with Canada,
and 144,000 people came to our coastal borders.
Right now we're going to focus on the big number,
the two and a half million people coming through the
southwest border.
What exactly happens to all these people?
The first type of border encounter is called inadmissible
and these can happen only at official ports of entry
into the United States.
These encounters occurred 430,000 times at the southwest border in
2023. The second type of encounter occurs between ports of
entry and is called an apprehension,
and there were 2 million of them at the southwest
border in
2023. Now, a very important fact to know
If a person deemed inadmissible at a border crossing or
apprehended between ports of entry asks for asylum,
immigration law requires we give them a hearing.
That's because of the
1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees
and later the Refugee Act of
1980. So the two and a half million encounters at
the southwest border in
2023, Let's break them down.
1.3 millionaire permitted to enter the United States and are
lawfully released pending an appearance at immigration court or they
admitted into the country for humanitarian reasons.
Those people will remain in the country potentially years as
they wait for their hearing.
765,000 of the individuals encountered at the southwest border were
repatriated or expelled in
2023. This includes expulsions under Title 42.
Title 42 was a program where unauthorized immigrants encountered the
border were expelled as quickly as possible in the interest
of US public health.
During COVID-19, there were 200,000 expulsions in
2020, 1.1 million in
20211.1 million in 2022, and
600,000 expulsions in the first half of
2023. Before the official end of the public health emergency
and title,
42311 thousand migrants were transferred to the supervision
of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
or ICE as it's known,
for further processing. These people might have been detained or
released.
ICE on average has 34,000 people in detention on any
given day.
118,000 migrants were unaccompanied minors who were transferred to the
Department of Health and Human Services for care and custody
determination.
That sums up the two and a half million encounters
with unauthorized immigrants that crossed the Southwest border in
2023. But it doesn't end there.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that about
600,000 people in 2023 enter through the southwest border without
being intercepted by Border Patrol officers.
Let's step back for a Fact Check on unauthorized immigration.
Two and a half million encounters with unauthorized immigrants at
the southwest border in
2023. Of these encounters, 1.3 million people were released into
the country,
430,000 more people were transferred to ICE or Health and
Human Services,
765,000 people were repatriated or expelled.
Plus, in an estimated 600,000 who entered the country undetected,
that means 2.3 million new unauthorized immigrants
came over the southwest border into the country.
We do not know how many unauthorized immigrants may have
left the country in the year.
For context, encounter numbers at the southwest border ranged between
400,000 and 600,000 per year from 2014 to
2018, reaching nearly 1,000,000 in 2019.
After a dip in 2020 at the height of the
pandemic,
encounters that the border went up to
1.7 million in 2020, one
2.4 million in 2022, and reached the two and a
half million we discussed in
2023. Now I'm going to admit to being confused.
Unauthorized immigrant assessments have been flat for a number of
years at 11 million people,
while the number of people coming to the country has
increased.
But our government needs to dig in and get all
the required numbers to understand that
since many of the unauthorized immigrants are seeking asylum,
let's start by looking at the asylum system.
Looking at asylum cases in
2022, about 500,000 people apply
while waiting for a court hearing.
These migrants can get work permits from the federal government
after their asylum application has been in process for
180 days. Here's the problem though.
This means many unauthorized immigrants have court cases years in
the future.
At the end of 2023,
there was a backlog of
2.5 million immigration court cases.
In that same year, the courts handed down decisions on
222,000 asylum cases, granting asylum in just
32,000 of those cases. Now there are a few other
groups who are part of the unauthorized immigrant population.
To start, we hear a lot in the news about
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,
which is known as DACA,
under which
545,000 people are living here in the United States.
Another big category is what's called Temporary Protected Status,
or TPS. Unauthorized immigrants living here may seek relief from
deportation if the State Department deems their country unsafe to
return to.
As of March 2020, four
864,000 immigrants were in the United States under TPS.
There are also people overstaying their visas.
DHS Homeland Security estimated
850,000 people to have overstayed their visas in
2022. However, there's no data on how long these people
actually remain in the US.
Finally,
let's look at authorized and unauthorized immigration in the context
of total US population.
Today, America has 335 million people,
about 46 million of whom
were born outside the United States.
This is the third year in a row where immigration
has been the main driver of population growth,
which was 1.6 million people in total.
One of that 1.1 million came from immigration,
while only 500,000 came from more people being born than
dying,
a consequence of our declining birth rate.
19% of our workforce, almost one in five workers,
is foreign board. I've learned a lot.
I hope you have two
people want to come to America.
It's been that way for hundreds of years
now. It's for you to decide.
Is our system working? What level of immigration do we
want to have?
How should things be changed?
The more we know, the better voters we can be.
Just the facts. You decide what you believe.