Illegal Immigration Expected to Hit Highest Level Since George W. Bush

Illegal immigration this year is expected to hit the highest level in a decade, reaching numbers that the United States has not seen since President George W. Bush.

In December 2018, the last month for illegal border crossing totals, there were close to 51,000 border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, a level that outpaced Princeton Policy researcher Steven Kopits’ monthly projection by about 3.5 percent.

The month before, there were nearly 52,000 border crossings. Based on the latest available data, Kopits projects there to be about 606,000  crossings this year at the U.S.-Mexico border, a level of illegal immigration that surpasses nearly every year of illegal immigration under President Obama.

“The migrants are coming, through the official entry points or away from them, but they are coming, and coming in quantity,” Kopits wrote in his monthly projection report.

In Fiscal Year 2008, which started with Bush and ended with Obama, there were more than 705,000 crossings at the southern border. The year before, there were close to 860,000 border crossings.

Should illegal immigration to the U.S. keep pace with Kopits’ projections of more than 600,000 border crossings this year, this would be double what illegal immigration levels were in Fiscal Year 2017, Trump’s first year in office.

Additionally, this would represent an increase of illegal immigration at the southern border between 2017 and this year of more than 99 percent.

Illegal immigration under Trump has been skyrocketing since his first year in office. For example, for the calendar year 2018, illegal immigration levels at the U.S.-Mexico border hit about 465,600 crossings. This was a level of illegal immigration not seen since Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 border crossing totals, when about 480,000 foreign nationals were apprehended at the border.

Aside from overwhelming already strained Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resources, illegal immigration hits the country’s working and middle class the hardest, as they are left paying an annual bill of about $116 billion to subsidize the cost of illegal aliens.

Mass illegal and legal immigration adversely diminishes wages and job prospects for American workers, especially black Americans who are more likely to compete for U.S. jobs against cheaper, foreign workers.

Every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an American workers’ occupation reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent, researcher Steven Camarotta concludes. This means the average native-born American worker today has their wage reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.

Likewise, every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.

The Washington, DC-imposed mass legal immigration policy is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates, as America’s working and middle class have their wealth redistributed to the country’s top earners through wage stagnation.

Currently, the U.S. admits more than a million legal immigrants annually, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million.

The U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next two decades should current legal immigration levels continue. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will arrive in the country through chain migration.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.