There were 850,000 visitors who overstayed their visas and remained in the country in 2022.
Included in visa overstays are tourists, H-1Bs, J-1s and F-1s as well as assorted other visa categories of which dozens are State Department-approved.
More executive branch overreach: President Joe Biden’s administration has expanded its migrant program to accept up to 522,000 asylum seekers into the United States per year.
In January, Biden announced he would let up to 360,000 asylum seekers into the country annually, provided they apply through the CBP One phone app.
That program has since been expanded to 1,450 appointments per day from 1,000, meaning up to another 162,000 migrants could be ushered into the United States.
In Biden’s view, these are legal immigrants even though the vehicle he created that allows them to enter, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection app, has not been congressionally approved and is illegal.
Meanwhile, the CBP app entrants will be using their work authorized status to displace low-skilled black, Hispanic and other diverse Americans from the job market.
What’s certain is that the border surgers’ and visa overstay totals, whatever they may be, represent record levels of illegal immigration that are Biden’s unlawful agenda.
Neither Biden nor Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has the authority to authorize releasing aliens, or as happens in most cases, to grant them parole with work authorization.
Despite the cooked-books style of revised Homeland Security Department accounting, southern border encounters are still roughly four times the level at which President Barack Obama’s DHS secretary, Jeh Johnson, said constituted a crisis.
Federal law requires that all these illegal aliens be detained throughout their asylum proceedings, but most are being released. Immigration lawyers call the CBP’s subversion aiding and abetting illegal immigration a federal felony subject to fines and imprisonment.
The fallout from Biden’s lawless immigration agenda is well underway. Every day, an estimated 1,000 needy migrants arrive in New York.
The city, by its own admission, doesn’t have adequate housing or food to properly care for them. Tent cities abound. Mayor Eric Adams is pleading for federal assistance.
Other big city mayors in Chicago and Washington, D.C., also are begging for funding to cope with the migrant overflow.
In Massachusetts, the alien emergency is so dire that Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll have implored residents to share their homes with aliens.
Their desperate refrain: “Become a sponsor family … Have an additional family be a part of your family.”
Taxpayers are subsidizing illegal aliens’ most every move once they’ve crossed the border. One estimate puts the aggregate cost to date at $20.5 billion.
With 18 months to go in Biden’s presidency that will include a lame-duck session when any immigration outrage is possible, the nation’s intake of illegal immigrants could approach 10 million, roughly the size of Los Angeles County.
Remember, too, that legal immigration continues on autopilot, and brings in annually more than 1 million lawful permanent residents with lifetime valid work permission.
Those new LPRs can petition their immediate and non-nuclear family members, a total that Princeton University conservatively calculates as three persons per new immigrants. Today’s 1 million LPR’s is tomorrows 3 million new U.S. residents.
Chain migration drives most U.S. population increases, and arriving migrants may be pregnant and could eventually grow their existing family.
From 1990 to today, the United States grew by 82 million people, and the nation is on a reckless course to match or exceed that unsustainable pattern.
In 2022, all immigrant classifications included, the nation added 6.9 million people — the state of Indiana’s population.
Those who entered legally, 1.1 million, may have job and English language skills. Illegal immigrants, however, are poor, unskilled and will be dependent on affirmative government assistance programs.
They’ll need the basics: housing, medical care, education, all of which will be taxpayer provided.
Absorbing the new arrivals will adversely alter Americans’ quality of life. The American Farmland Trust reported that over the last 20 years, the United States has lost more than 11 million acres of farmland to development to accommodate the nation’s soaring population.
Housing hasn’t kept up with immigration-driven population growth, and prices have spiked.
Over the past two decades, immigrants currently account for about 33 percent of all U.S. household growth, and have been a critical factor in the housing market’s recent boom. Blue collar workers and citizens aspired to own their first homes have been most adversely affected.
Unquestionably, new immigrants arrive in the United States to become consumers; their intention to buy goods and services is the main reason corporate America is so welcoming.
But immigrants will also consume natural resources — most important, water. The United States, beset by relentless drought, is drying up, especially in the West, and rain isn’t falling fast enough to offset increased consumption.
When water supplies are limited, and more people are consuming the essential resource, shortages will get acute. Ask the 40 million residents of California and the other six states that rely on the Colorado River for water what their feelings are about more and more immigrant water consumers lowering the reservoirs.
A final, important note: Biden’s hell-bent-for-leather welcome-the-world immigration agenda is unarguably a disaster for sovereign America. The news media cover-up is nearly as criminal and corrupt as his governance.
America’s future is in your hands — you, the voters. When Congress returns after Labor Day, the election 2024 cycle will begin in earnest.
As you evaluate candidates for president, the Senate and the House of Representatives, focus on whether the incumbent has stepped up in an effort to protect the American nation or supported and encouraged Biden as illegal immigrants overwhelm the country.
Immigration is the most critical issue on the ballot. Fight back with the most important tool you have: your vote.