A Better Border Policy (can it get much worse?)
PUBLISHED: Wed, OCT 11th 2023 @ 10:44 am EDT by Jeremy Beck
FY2023 was the worst year for illegal immigration encounters on record.
There are two ways to think about illegal immigration numbers: 1) the number trying to enter illegally; and 2) the number entering illegally. The best metric to gauge the former is the "encounter". August 2023 encounters were the highest in history at over 300,000; the September numbers are expected to be even worse when they are made public.
To measure the number of people who enter illegally, you have to add up catch-and-release numbers and so-called "gotaways". The precise numbers are either not known or not made public by the government, but since January, 2021, an estimated 4 million people - roughly the population of the city of Los Angeles - have bypassed the legal immigration system established by Congress.
To get the full sense of illegal immigration's impact on the interior, you then have to add in visa overstays (which hit a record high in 2022). That gives you an estimated 5.7 million - or roughly the combined populations of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas - since 2021.
Cities Under Strain
https://www.numbersusa.com/blog/better-border-policy-can-it-get-much-worse
