How many foreign nationals really reside in the United States illegally? That is no doubt a question many Americans would like answers to, and we have the right to know what’s being allowed to take place in our own country. According to most mainstream estimates, that population is somewhere from 10-12 million. Defying all logic and evidence, that estimate has remained almost exactly the same for over a decade despite wild changes in policy, misleadingly implying that illegal immigration is not really that big of a deal.
However, using a much more reliable methodology, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates a much more realistic number of at least 16.8 million illegal aliens as of June 2023 in our new report, How Many Illegal Aliens are in the United States? 2023 Update. This estimate is based on public data available from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (but without dishonest weighting) and properly accounts for the difficulty of gathering information about this population. This is a conservative estimate that avoids speculation about unavailable data, but it still shows a staggering increase that represents huge costs for the average American. That number will undoubtedly continue climbing thanks to President Biden’s open-border policies.
Illegal migration has been a problem for decades, ebbing and flowing (but never stopping) in response to America’s economy and the strength of its enforcement of the law. However, the Biden administration has greatly exacerbated it. President Biden moved quickly to indiscriminately scrap nearly all of the previous administration’s enforcement and border security policies, in spite of their effectiveness in substantially reducing illegal migration. Team Biden reinstituted the illegal policy of catching and releasing illegal border crossers, all too often without even court dates or reliable ways to track them. It has also attempted to “legalize” illegal immigration, massively abusing humanitarian parole authority to bring in tens of thousands of inadmissible foreign nationals every month and giving them work permits with little vetting or oversight.
Not surprisingly, during only two years of the Biden administration – with historically unprecedented border apprehension and gotaway numbers – the illegal alien population has grown by a whopping 2.3 million people. That is a more rapid trajectory than ever before, and the majority of growth in the foreign-born population is now made up of illegal aliens. By mid-2024, the Biden administration will have added more illegal aliens than in all of 2010-2020 in less than four years. It bears repeating that this is still a conservative estimate, and that there is general consensus that the Census Bureau’s surveys significantly undercount the illegal population. Even after considering undercounts and nonresponses, the government data upon which this report is based excludes the tens of thousands of illegal aliens on the streets and in shelters, not to mention untold millions more who’ve slipped in undetected, overstayed a visa, or simply disappeared. 16.8 million is a high point as far as historical estimates go, but it’s a lowball estimate because there are significant numbers of illegal aliens who cannot be enumerated.
For the average American, this rapidly growing illegal alien population also means growing costs, and at a time when inflation has been taking a serious bite out of their purchasing power to boot. FAIR recently estimated that illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children cost us a net sum of almost $151 billion per year, or almost $1,000 annually per American taxpayer. When adjusted for the updated illegal alien population estimate, it sets us up for a cost of $163 billion annually and over $1,000 per year per taxpayer.
In addition, there are costs that are less readily quantifiable, such as time and attention being diverted from American pupils to illegal alien ones in our public schools, or more illegal alien criminals making our communities less safe. Because most people have kids, and everyone grows older, our schools and medical systems will be ever more burdened as the Biden administration lets in thousands of illegal aliens every month with no prospect of them leaving anytime soon, or perhaps ever.
Thus, the impact of a massively growing illegal alien population goes far beyond a number, even the foreboding and unprecedented 16.8 million (at least). It represents a tide and a burden affecting not only border states like Texas and California, but the entirety of the country. Biden administration policies on illegal immigration and the border – which have significantly contributed to the growing problem – are unsustainable and out-of-control.
Pawel Styrna is Senior Researcher at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and a legal immigrant. Michael Capuano is a Researcher and Staff Writer at FAIR.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.