The 2021 Illegal Alien Population

In this episode FAIR's Research team breaks down our latest report which pegs the illegal alien population at 15.5 million as of the end of 2021, and discusses how much this cohort costs American taxpayers.
Here's the report: https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/2021-update-how-many-illegal-aliens-live-united-states

Show Notes

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform's podcast bringing you the most important updates about U.S. immigration. Featuring special guests including members of Congress, journalists, and experts in the field.

Jason:
as I’m looking at the latest update on the illegal alien population for 2021 I realized that the factors that drove 2021's increase are eerily similar to the factors for the 2020 increase just to a much larger degree based on how the current administration is taking a wrecking ball to our border security and interior immigration enforcement mechanisms coupled with unscrupulous employers taking advantage of the influx of cheap labor I think it's likely we can see an additional growth in the illegal alien population if things continue hello and welcome back to another episode of fear's understanding immigration podcast I’m jason peña one of fair’s researchers and today I’m joined by the rest of the research team here I have senior researcher pawel styrna and the director of fair research spencer raley today we're going to discuss our team's latest report for the illegal healing population of 2021. spencer I want you to take the charge on this what were our findings with this year's report

Spencer:
yeah so this is of course a report that we do every single year have been for pro I think about a decade or more now and just kind of the idea so the american public can have a general honest accurate look at what the illegal alien population likely is and you know and kind of a roundabout figure each year so last year when we did this report we found that there were about 14.5 million illegal aliens based on you know just our current estimate which was only a slight increase but still an increase from the previous year this year that number has gone way up is increased by an entire million to 15.5 million in our estimation and I mean there's really a number of reasons for that we'll get into it but just to kind of break it down a little bit illegal aliens kind of as we all understand all would predict they tend to live for the most part near the border in fact roughly I believe it's roughly 70 percent of the illegal alien population is in five or six states california texas arizona new mexico nevada florida also has of course a very large population especially from individuals who are coming in via water instead of necessary just coming across the southern border but you also see large numbers of illegal aliens in states like new york again very popular port for migrants coming into the united states and one thing we often forget about especially with the major crisis going on at the southern border right now is that a large portion nearly half of all illegal aliens are visa overstays and so you end up with a lot of individuals in migrant heavy cities like new york city who just opt to never go home but I think it's really important for us to not forget and for us to not gloss over the fact that illegal immigration is becoming a problem in smaller states as well I mean here you know just outside of our doors here in virginia there are hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens living here we see the impact of gangs made of illegal aliens such as ms-13 every day in fairfax county and just kind of in surrounding areas here you're also starting to see it feel the crunch in small states maine west virginia other states that have you know maybe not nearly as many illegal aliens as you know a state like texas which is right around 2 million they have more like 10 to 15,000 in those states but because it's a smaller population it's harder to absorb it so you know just having a small group in your schools can really put the pressure on teachers to be able to provide adequate teaching to all of these students so it's really it's really something that's being felt all across the united states now not just in those border states anymore as we always historically thought it also hits americans in their wallets based on our 2017 fiscal cost study which was the last major in-depth cost study we did we estimate with this most recent estimate that there is it's probably costing americans around 143.1 billion dollars a year which is approximately a 9.4 billion dollar increase over last year so it continues to be a significant issue a concerning problem that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon doesn't seem to be improving

Jason:
no you're absolutely right spencer you know when we were crafting this report I was looking at some of the factors that like how we got here with this increase in the illegal alien population as I mentioned earlier many of these same factors occurred in the 2020 increase just now we have some other new factors coming in so for instance one thing is with the economy improving because it's reeling from the economic effects of the covid 19 pandemic we see a lot of employers who are seeing the dollar signs they're using this as they're rolling out the red carpet for this influx of cheap foreign labor that's one thing that we have noticed when we were getting data for this report some of the more obvious reasons for the increase is essentially joe biden has eviscerated border security interior immigration enforcement as we've covered prolifically here at fair his memos have essentially handcuffed ice from doing their jobs he's essentially overwhelmed border patrol agents from having the proper resources and personnel to handle this influx of illegal aliens and really the cherry on top is president biden campaign on granting amnesty to the illegal alien population as we've pointed out in the past any time you utter the words amnesty or you offer some sort of protection from removal such as temporary protected status the flow gates are essentially open and we saw this you know spencer we recently spoke about temporary protected status for cameroon and how once president joe biden got in office we saw an influx of these central african migrants coming in through traversing like across the atlantic making their way through south and central america all the way to the u.s.-mexico border so we're even seeing how distance isn't stopping foreign nationals across the globe

Spencer:
right we saw the growth of the illegal alien population did slow a little bit during the trump administration a big reason for that was because of things like the remaining mexico program that was put in place in 2019 and other serious reforms are taking place and just the simple fact that the trump administration had very strong rhetoric essentially telling potential illegal aliens like if we catch you we're going to deport you are going to remove you have to come here the right way right so while you also on the flip side had a very strong economy which you know led a lot a lot of potential illegal aliens to still decide to take the risk and come here but we saw you know removals went up again refusals at the borders returns things like that then of course you had 2020 which was you know obviously a very special case in that covid 19 really slowed everything down the economy ground to a halt so there's a little less incentive for illegal aliens to come here as well as you know just issues in general with travel to the united states so you didn't have we talked a little bit already about overstays you didn't have individuals coming in the united states on tourist visas and so they didn't have the opportunity to overstay those we did find it concerning that the illegal alien population still increased during that time period now if you look at just the month by month which you can extrapolate looking at the census bureau's current population survey which is released every month we'll get into that a little later it looked like the illegal alien population dropped pretty you know not dramatically but it did drop slightly throughout 2020 until near the end of the year when the economy started to reopen and when joe biden especially was elected they all just the floodgates open they all started coming here we remember seeing the you know november and december caravans of migrants wearing joe biden t-shirts and I remember him here because joe biden told us to that's when that kind of rebounded and went from negative territory into positive territory then once biden took office and all these radical changes you mentioned took place that just went through the roof just you know we saw 1.7 million apprehensions encounters at the southern border alone last year in fiscal 2021 and that's just going up even more now

Jason:
no absolutely spencer one thing also for our audience members who are viewing our rapport or will in the future we do have a separate category for the u.s. born children of illegal aliens now just keep in mind that we do not include this estimate into the broader illegal alien population because they are considered to be u.s. citizens thanks to birthright citizenship pablo I want to shift this over to you what is this estimate of the u.s. born children and why is it important to include them in the discussion about the illegal alien population and the ramifications that come from it

Pawel:
the total population estimate for illegal aliens plus the u.s. born children is 20.9 million and our cost figures basically include these since the presence of these peoples correlated with costs and they're a direct result of their parents being in the country illegally so in other words had their parents been back in their homelands those children were right and they wouldn't be here in their homeland yeah so I mean that's a fact you know and so when they're going to school or when they're able because obviously a us since they're citizens they're they qualify for all kinds of welfare and usually they're able to receive it so all those costs including schooling and all of that american taxpayers are paying for that so that's the key reason why we include it

Spencer:
yeah I think that's real important because like you mentioned with welfare risk you know possibilities for these children oftentimes that ends up being a benefit to those parents as well in fact we see in a lot of states where you know certain federal and state welfare programs will actually apply to for just for example medical care for a pregnant illegal alien mother because the child that's going to be born will be a u.s. citizen so they already qualify for some of those cares and of course in the united states we're not going to deny medical care to anyone in the country you know that would violate a lot of very noble oaths taken by health care professionals and unfortunately there are a lot of people that you know you take advantage of that and so whether that's through the he illegal aliens directly or through their children those are associated costs and so it makes sense that we would include those in all of our estimates but you know we wanted to be careful we wanted to separate the two we wanted to show what the figure was of just the actual illegal aliens than have that supplemental figure that included u.s. born children as well

Pawel:
yeah and the birthright citizenship is actually something super important that we need to keep focusing on because it is a it is a magnet it's one of the magnets that draws more illegal aliens here because they believe that will help them in some way to eventually get some sort of legal status here as parents of natural-born u.s. citizens they also believe rightly that children would be better their children would be better taken care of by the system right in a wealthy country like the united states than they would be in their homeland so yeah I mean it's a flawed policy it attracts illegal migration but you know it's really it's a big factor

Spencer:
yeah it's really one of those situations where you can almost solve this in two different ways because obviously birthright citizenship has been kind of taken away from its original purpose and kind of refactored into this way of anchoring illegal aliens in the united states because they had children then something else that desperately need reform they then basically use chain migration you know being the parent of a u.s. citizen in order to further cement their status in the united states and eventually hopefully gain legal status and end goal citizenship so there are a lot of different reforms that could happen there whether it's you know if you came here illegally you don't have any chance of you know of gaining that status if you remain in the united states or just you know reforming what birthright citizenship means or just simply moving to a merit-based immigration system in the first place so there's a lot of a lot of ways that could be fixed that's a little bit we could honestly talk all day about that for sure but yeah we definitely wanted to highlight the difference because that's one thing that people often misunderstand they ask if our figures include the children of u.s. born or of illegal aliens but we definitely want to draw that distinction

Jason:
very compelling points gentlemen I now I really want to touch upon one last time about how it's not just when illegal aliens get here that is also the issue but how your u.s. born children are essentially force multipliers in short when they apply for snap or medicare or what have you they use public services public safety and how this exacerbates local and state communities you know we've talked about this in these in the small state small jurisdiction study of how these small communities such as the ones in maine who are overwhelmed with foreign nationals both legal and illegal because they because they didn't have the proper resources and there aren't proper checks in place

Spencer:
and again it kind of it really throws off what these social welfare nets were intended to service and messes up the framework that's in place to fund them you know the idea with so many of these is that individuals are paying in passively or directly some sort of tax that is going into this system for decades even you know many many years so when you have someone that comes to the united states has never paid into this system at all has a child who then qualifies for all of these welfare benefits they are a net drain and that's what the data has always shown on this topic there have been reports from you know the social security administration from snap from other government agencies showing that this is a drain and our own studies our own fiscal costs have confirmed that have confirmed those reports and I find it really interesting that so many pro illegal alien groups out there know this that's why they only focus on the taxes paid by illegal aliens and they refuse to look at the services that they're taking part in the associated costs so I think that's something very important to keep in mind when looking at the impact here it's not that we don't want to provide as many people with help as possible it's just that when we let people game the system we put the system at a disadvantage and everyone knows so many of our welfare systems are on the road to absolute bankruptcy and this is a big part of why

Jason:
shifting gears a little bit spencer let's get into the methodology here we definitely need to talk about why this this figure is much higher than 2020 and in the preceding years

Spencer:
well first of all I think you kind of hit the nail on the head earlier and really I mean you could just sum it up with joe biden I mean he took office he removed all of he not just undid everything that the trump administration did to secure the southern border he went further handcuffed ice didn't let doesn't let them do their job apprehend immigration law breakers and ultimately remove them he turned customs border protection into a welcoming agency that just brings individuals into the country as quickly as possible and the economy is improving after code as well there are no more there are very few shutdowns anymore if any you know employers are hiring again and many of them you know suffered economically during the coven 19 pandemic so one of the ways we're seeing them try to recoup some of those profits is in a dishonorable way looking to illegal alien labor that they can pay far less than a u.s. citizen and of course we're still seeing a lot of american citizens that are not working there are still very attractive welfare benefits out there that have not expired yet that make it more worthwhile for a lot of individuals to stay home than to go get a job that may only pay 10 12 an hour or something but it's important to keep in mind that as those expire those individuals are going to need to go back into the job force they're going to start partaking in the labor market again they're going to need work and if we've replaced them all with migrants whether it's illegal aliens or temporary workers or some other guest worker program that's going to create a major labor issue in the future so that's those are some of the reasons why I definitely want to talk a little bit about how we reach these figures because that's always you know one of the biggest questions we get it's not like when someone comes into the united states border patrol is like checking off illegal alien illegal aliens you know it's not like there's some census count that asks people their citizenship status we have certainly you know the trump administration has tried to implement some of that it's always been held up by court systems so what we do is we look at the census bureaus american community survey as well as the current population survey both of them undertaken by the department of labor and the census bureau and what we do is we look at the total number of immigrants individuals that list themselves as foreign born we also look at different categories of that because there's a lot of variation between individuals who list themselves as foreign born by citizenship or those who list themselves as by period of time in the country for example when you subtract that by the total number of legal immigrants that are estimating in the country of course the difference would be illegal aliens but you can't really stop there unfortunately because illegal aliens have a vested interest in not working with government officials and a lot of them don't want to respond to census bureau surveys or any of these other government programs and you know in the past this was not a controversial topic you know most research agencies agreed that the under count from the census bureau methodologies was between 20 to 40 percent most of them came in the 25 to 30 range however as this topic has become more political over the last 10 to 20 years you see a lot of mainstream organizations have been lowering that count without really explaining why assuming that the census bureau is more accurate at including illegal aliens and they have made some efforts to try to get there but they're really underwhelming and there's no evidence to show that they have been more accurate in fact over the last year there have been a lot of reports coming out showing that the census bureau has been under counting individuals of particularly hispanic origin and especially those that are migrants so it could actually stand to reason that undercount should be even higher than what we assume it is so we stick with kind of the historical accepted figure for how much this is under counted and what that does that's why you see a bit of a difference between a lot of organizations that for the last 10 15 years have been trying to say there's 10 or 11 million illegal aliens in the united states and ours which you know now has it at 15 over 15 million so that that's the main reason you see that some of the differences and the figures that we have of course that's lower than a lot of estimates we've seen some as high as 22 23 million right there's really no way to know for sure because again it's there's just there isn't some centralized database of who isn't an illegal alien it could be higher it could be a little bit lower than what we're saying but we feel pretty confident that using long accepted methodologies that this is what the you know this is this is a pretty accurate figure that we have

Jason:
unfortunately team it seems as things currently stand with the bite administration I think we can only expect this the illegal alien population to increase when we do our report for 2022 we look at just recently the biden administration said that they're going to be lifting title 42 for our audience members who are unfamiliar with what title 42 is it is a cdc health measure that allows immigration authorities at the southern border to quickly expel illegal aliens who are shown to have some sort of communicable infectious diseases such as coronavirus we here for have been talking about this pretty extensively for the past few weeks just because of how it really is one if not is one of one of the few if not the last mechanism that is keeping the border together barely as we look deeper I think if the bidet administration and his dhs lieutenant alejandro mayorkas were to rescind this tool from cbp authorities I could I could honestly see the floodgates being open and more even more illegal aliens would come across the southern border increasing the growth in the illegal alien population for years to come

Spencer:
right I mean I think what we're looking at with the biden administration this year is they don't seem interested at all in doing anything to slow the you know importation of as many migrants into the country as possible whether they're illegal aliens use expanding some of the guest worker programs etc in fact it just seems like it's the hill that they want to die on you know it's one of the major reason why the approval rating of biden is now lower in a lot of polls than trump ever reached something the mainstream media harped on all the time was trump's low approval ratings well now I was just looking at the quinnipiac poll that just came out biden is now lower than trump ever was and one major reason for this is immigration you look at some of the gallup tracking polls of course the right conservatives are virtually united on this front opposing you know open borders especially for those that are not authorized to be in the country we also see now at least a plurality even a majority in most in most polls of independence want to see this crisis at the southern border brought under control and while may not seem like a big figure you've got in a lot of polls 20 30 percent of democrats that want to see this taken under control and when you're talking about 30 of your base leaving you plus most moderates and virtually all of your opposition that that's that should be sounding the alarm in your administration so it's really telling that the buying administration is willing to die on this hill so I think you can just continue to expect them to try to just process migrants as fast as possible hoping that if you don't have pictures of kids in cages and thousands of migrants sitting under bridges that maybe somehow americans will either forget about it or get on board with it or I don't know I mean there's so much of so much of this agenda that makes no sense to me

Pawel:
I think part of it is also ideological I think the biden administration just especially alejandro mayorkas but not just him there's this philosophy that there's this philosophy there that basically they would prefer to have this you know border chaos and out of control legal migration then tamp down on it because tamping down on it would mean that they would be quote unquote inhumane or quote unquote mean and they prefer chaos to feeling that they're bad people so that's a part of it on the other hand right now you have like nine or ten democratic senators including ones on the border states who are saying especially arizona who are opposing the biden administration plans to right lift title 42 and rightly so although you know mostly that's guided by fears of you know right what's going to happen in the midterms (yeah it's going to happen here in a few months too) yeah so and there are reports the biden administration is reconsidering it or maybe putting it off until later but so we'll see what hap we'll see what happens but definitely lifting title 42 would make the situation much much worse

Spencer:
right and it's hard to even imagine it getting much worse at this point I mean we're already in a situation where border patrol is physically incapable of processing everyone that they are processing right now and most months right now nearly half of the apprehended and encountered illegal aliens are being removed via title 42 so you're talking about maybe double the number of individuals being resettled in the country and that should just be alarming to anyone in any situation in the united states right now

Jason:
some of the things that we've been talking about here at our organization that the biden administration can do to slow down the large flow of illegal immigrants pouring through southern border is reinstating first of all remain in mexico and the acas these are the asylum cooperative agreements with the northern triangle countries these countries have already shown that they are willing to cooperate with us in making sure that if there are third country nationals who are applying for asylum they should do it in the first available country not going all the way to the united states only to give a fraudulent meritless claim and then being released into the interior which is where catch and release comes in you have we have scores and scores of illegal aliens who are essentially just they're given a quick screening by border agents their information is taken down and they're giving them a court date hoping that the information is accurate and that they'll show up when their court hearing is later down the road as we've talked about before most people most aliens do not show up to their asylum court dates so they eventually disappear into the interior and communities across the country another thing that this administration can do is implement mandatory verify you know we're talking about the midterms here in happening in a few months this is something that has crossed political lines you know majority of republicans a plurality of democrats support e-verify they come to the consensus that yes you know what if you are going to work here in the united states you should be legal here you should have authorization to work here under the right circumstances that is an easy not only would that damper illegal immigration but it sets the message that to other to other would-be illegal immigrants that no we're taking our immigration laws seriously and again we've talked about how there's been this bipartisan consensus both democrats and republicans have come together saying like president biden you need to get your house in order you need to stop doing what you're doing and honestly you know I i was watching alejandro mayorkas before we started recording and he essentially said no we still plan on moving forward with scrapping title 42.

Spencer:
right and he was trying to throw it over and say well this is actually the cdc's decision when we all know it's really not I mean he's trying to pass off blame for a disaster that his department is overseeing

Jason:
it surprises me every time I hear these and watch these press briefings on the on immigration policy spencer pawel is there anything else that the administration can do in order to get this crisis under control

Pawel:
well maybe if they wanted to which they won't crack down on sanctuary jurisdictions that's another big magnet illegal aliens are you know they're rational agents the rational people and they know they know incentives they know disincentives right sanctuary jurisdictions areas where illegal aliens that are arrested are not going to be handed over to ice because of foolish ideological policies they know that's the area to go right rather than areas where they will be handed over to ice if they commit a crime

Spencer:
right and if you look at if you look at the interactive map on this report you'll see states that have heavy concentrations of sanctuary cities in the interior of the country the populations are going up whether you're looking at portland seattle northern virginia areas like that you're starting to see that you're starting to see those illegal aliens coalescing in those areas yeah I know I know a lot of this talk about like oh the vine administration should implement everything sounds like you're you know it's not gonna happen but I think it's also important to remember that most of the immigration authority that the president has right now has been delegated to him by congress so the president is not willing to get his house in order like we're saying congress has the ability to pass laws saying we are taking this power back you have to abide by these certain guidelines again you know we are you know codifying certain immigration laws whether it's you know e-verify or banning sanctuary cities things like that and I think you know the american people y'all been doing a great job of putting the pressure on your elected officials they see these poll results that's why you have people like mark kelly kirsten cinema and arizona starting to go well maybe we shouldn't you know revoke title 42 whereas just a few months ago it seems like democrats you know especially before biden took office democrats were united and saying that it was evil and racist and then you know overreach of authority now that tune is starting to change because again like pawel like you were saying illegal aliens are rational actors I mean congressmen and women are as well sometimes it doesn't seem like it but they know they know what they're facing if they don't you know if they don't start representing their voters if they don't listen to what their what their constituents are telling them so I think it's time for congress to start you know doing their job telling the buy administration either you must act on this or we're going to take some of that authority back and we're going to start legislating on the issue as well so that's in my mind it just seems like that is the only real way forward because the bite administration is not going to take this topic seriously so you know once we come to november if republicans take back the house and that does seem likely at this point and you know they maybe gain a senate seat or two we the american people really need to put the pressure on them to take this topic seriously they have to take whatever opportunity they have to pass some of these reforms and essentially hopefully so that when we're back here doing the 2022 illegal alien population update you know we are then saying I’m sure that the show this figure will be much higher then but we're then saying hey but there's a light at the end of the tunnel maybe this is going to start reforming itself soon but at this point we just don't see that happening

Pawel:
yeah and of course democrats rank and file democrats and you'll be putting pressure on their elected representatives and leaders to you know do the right thing at the same time republican rank and finance also put pressure on right because there is an element there is a faction that's pro amnesty and soft on legal immigration approaching foreign labor in the gop and so even if republicans do take power back in november 2022 there's still that faction is still going to be rearing its head so the right is going to have to be a need to contain it

Spencer:
right like we saw during the trump administration by far and wide when the pressure was on them they fell in line you know behind president trump and actually supported so many of these reforms and I think I think we're seeing some of them start to realize how important they really are and so yeah it's important to keep in mind it's easy to sometimes look at some of this as a partisan republican versus democrat with you know independence somewhere in the middle type of issue that's not always the case you know there have always been some democrats who seem like they've been a little more rational on this topic and there are you know been a lot of republicans who seem to be beholden to kind of the you know anarchist slash big business liberal agenda when it comes to just trying to get cheap labor and maximizing profits instead of you know doing what is good for the for american citizens so it's something to it's something that we always have to keep the pressure on with our elected officials and make sure that they are representing our interests

Jason:
all right team I think that's a great point to end on today for those of you listening we hope you enjoyed today's podcast we encourage we encourage everyone to share the podcast with your friends and family and we hope you leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to learn more about fair please visit our website at fairus.org we're also available on facebook and twitter at fair immigration this has been understanding immigration brought to you by fair