Full Transcript for How Many Illegal Aliens Are There?

foreign-born. Let's just make sure your listeners 38 00:02:11.599 --> 00:02:15.159 know exactly what that is. It includes anyone who's not 39 00:02:15.199 --> 00:02:18.620 a U.S. citizen at birth, so it would be naturalized citizens, 40 00:02:18.740 --> 00:02:23.210 lawful permanent residents, the green card holder. long-term temporary visitors 41 00:02:23.219 --> 00:02:27.789 like guest workers and students and illegal immigrants. Yes, illegal 42 00:02:27.810 --> 00:02:32.150 immigrants are included in Census Bureau surveys. And the latest 43 00:02:32.169 --> 00:02:34.849 survey from the month of July that we had analyzed, 44 00:02:35.349 --> 00:02:38.710 it's called the Current Population Survey, shows the foreign-born has 45 00:02:38.750 --> 00:02:41.430 fallen quite a lot since January of last year when 46 00:02:41.469 --> 00:02:45.580 President Trump took over. Overall, the total foreign-born has declined 47 00:02:45.620 --> 00:02:49.120 by about 2.9 million from January 2025 to July of 2026. 48 00:02:52.199 --> 00:02:57.500 This followed an 8.3 million increase in the prior four years, 49 00:02:57.539 --> 00:03:02.240 that is under President Biden, in the post-COVID border surge. Now, 50 00:03:02.300 --> 00:03:04.090 keep in mind, and this issue may come up again 51 00:03:04.120 --> 00:03:06.909 and again, these are all the net change. It is 52 00:03:07.009 --> 00:03:09.810 not the number of new arrivals. It's not the number 53 00:03:09.830 --> 00:03:14.370 of people leaving. New people are always arriving. People are 54 00:03:14.430 --> 00:03:18.610 always leaving. And there's also, for the overall foreign born, 55 00:03:18.629 --> 00:03:22.569 a significant amount of natural human mortality of about 300,000 56 00:03:22.569 --> 00:03:25.110 a year, which means that when we're looking at these numbers, 57 00:03:25.409 --> 00:03:30.259 we're looking at net change. Now, the huge decline does 58 00:03:30.419 --> 00:03:34.219 indicate that net migration out of the United States has 59 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:38.069 probably turned negative. That hasn't probably been true since the 1930s. 60 00:03:38.189 --> 00:03:41.569 In other words, more people are leaving than are coming. 61 00:03:42.379 --> 00:03:46.319 We know that looking at several sources, but basically this decline, 62 00:03:46.599 --> 00:03:49.990 the only way to explain a decline of 2.9 million 63 00:03:50.349 --> 00:03:52.849 in that time period, because there should have only been 64 00:03:52.870 --> 00:03:57.610 around 400,000 deaths among the foreign-born, given their... We know 65 00:03:57.629 --> 00:03:59.210 a lot about the foreign-born in terms of their age 66 00:03:59.250 --> 00:04:01.090 and race and gender and so forth, so we can 67 00:04:01.150 --> 00:04:05.979 estimate death rates. That big decline has to indicate that 68 00:04:06.099 --> 00:04:09.039 a lot of people are leaving. Now, remember, there's margins 69 00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:12.629 of error around all these numbers, but still... there looks 70 00:04:12.689 --> 00:04:17.050 to be an increase in out-migration. Prior to the recent period, 71 00:04:17.449 --> 00:04:23.139 the overall foreign-born out-migration was usually reckoned to be about 750,000 72 00:04:23.139 --> 00:04:27.259 a year. That is 750,000 people leave each year, but 73 00:04:27.300 --> 00:04:30.259 it's a big population of 50 million people, roughly speaking. 74 00:04:30.620 --> 00:04:33.959 So it's not so strange that something like 1%, 2% 75 00:04:33.959 --> 00:04:37.329 would leave each year, but it looks like that number 76 00:04:37.569 --> 00:04:41.139 is way up now. But, you know, we do have caveats. 77 00:04:41.220 --> 00:04:43.560 Of course, there is, I say, a margin of error. 78 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:47.129 So something has fundamentally changed. One of the other interesting 79 00:04:47.189 --> 00:04:50.370 things we find is all of that decline of 2.9 80 00:04:50.370 --> 00:04:53.029 million in the foreign-born in roughly a year and a 81 00:04:53.029 --> 00:04:58.129 half is among immigrants from Latin America who are not U.S. citizens, 82 00:04:58.149 --> 00:05:00.300 because they do ask whether people are citizens and they 83 00:05:00.459 --> 00:05:04.279 ask where you're from, are people from Latin America who 84 00:05:04.319 --> 00:05:07.019 are not citizens who said they arrived in America in 85 00:05:07.019 --> 00:05:12.379 1980 or later. And that population very much is highly 86 00:05:12.500 --> 00:05:16.449 correlated with the illegal immigrant population. As we know, illegal 87 00:05:16.470 --> 00:05:20.430 immigrants come very heavily, maybe three-fourths. The government and other 88 00:05:20.509 --> 00:05:24.490 outside researchers suggest about three-fourths of all illegal immigrants in 89 00:05:24.529 --> 00:05:29.079 America are from Latin America. And there shouldn't be many, 90 00:05:29.259 --> 00:05:33.500 if any, illegal immigrants who arrived before 1980. As I say, 91 00:05:33.519 --> 00:05:36.259 the survey asks, when did you come? Partly because there 92 00:05:36.319 --> 00:05:38.899 was an amnesty and there are some other things. In 93 00:05:38.920 --> 00:05:42.240 the 80s, there was an amnesty and most people took 94 00:05:42.259 --> 00:05:45.259 advantage of that amnesty. So there shouldn't be. And over time, 95 00:05:45.279 --> 00:05:48.019 of course, people who are here tend to go home or, 96 00:05:48.029 --> 00:05:50.910 of course, just natural mortality. And so there shouldn't be 97 00:05:50.949 --> 00:05:53.569 many illegal immigrants in the United States who came before 1980. 98 00:05:53.550 --> 00:05:58.610 And this huge decline in the post-1980 Latin American non-citizen 99 00:05:58.649 --> 00:06:03.839 population is a pretty clear indicator that illegal immigration is 100 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:04.500 way down. 101 00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:08.180 And again, not just the illegal population is way down. 102 00:06:08.870 --> 00:06:10.769 OK, let's

let's go over that. 103 00:06:11.050 --> 00:06:14.829 Yeah. So because new illegal immigration is probably down as well. 104 00:06:14.930 --> 00:06:18.079 But this is departures have gone up as well. Both 105 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:20.899 things are going on. Now, remember, with the illegal population, 106 00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:22.879 you have a more complicated picture than when you're just 107 00:06:22.920 --> 00:06:26.139 looking at the overall foreign born. Because remember, among illegal 108 00:06:26.180 --> 00:06:30.050 immigrants just in any year, new people come. But some 109 00:06:30.089 --> 00:06:31.610 people here just go home on their own. 110 00:06:32.089 --> 00:06:34.170 Or they get deported. A lot of people go home 111 00:06:34.230 --> 00:06:36.279 on their own. They've earned the money. They don't like 112 00:06:36.339 --> 00:06:38.259 living here, whatever it is. So people are going home 113 00:06:38.300 --> 00:06:41.100 all the time. In addition to that, we legalize at 114 00:06:41.259 --> 00:06:46.779 least 100,000, sometimes 200,000 people a year because they either 115 00:06:46.839 --> 00:06:49.560 get asylum, they win the visa law, or they marry 116 00:06:49.579 --> 00:06:52.399 an American. Now, sometimes the law will trip them up, 117 00:06:52.730 --> 00:06:56.870 but still, there's still a lot of people legalizing every 118 00:06:56.970 --> 00:07:00.329 single year. And so they're exiting the illegal population as well. 119 00:07:00.620 --> 00:07:03.899 So you don't just have deportations and just voluntary departures. 120 00:07:04.199 --> 00:07:08.899 You have legalizations. And then finally, you have 50,000, 75,000 121 00:07:08.899 --> 00:07:11.660 deaths among the illegal population, again, just as part of 122 00:07:11.720 --> 00:07:13.420 natural human mortality. 123 00:07:14.019 --> 00:07:14.899 So in that. 124 00:07:14.819 --> 00:07:18.199 Context, a lot of illegal immigrants can come, but the 125 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:22.199 illegal immigrant population not grow. And remember, unlike a typical 126 00:07:22.259 --> 00:07:27.040 human population, one exceptional thing about the foreign-born overall or 127 00:07:27.139 --> 00:07:30.779 illegal immigrants in general, or specifically, I should say, is 128 00:07:30.819 --> 00:07:35.100 that there are no births to these populations that add 129 00:07:35.220 --> 00:07:38.720 to it. All births to illegal immigrants, all births to 130 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:42.240 legal immigrants, what have you, all, by definition, add to 131 00:07:42.279 --> 00:07:45.519 the native-born population, and thus we don't count them as foreign-born. 132 00:07:45.540 --> 00:07:48.110 We don't count them as being in the country illegally. 133 00:07:48.550 --> 00:07:52.610 We do estimate that the total illegal population, when President 134 00:07:52.649 --> 00:07:56.949 Biden left office, had reached 15.8 million. It had grown 135 00:07:56.990 --> 00:08:00.610 by nearly 6 million under him. That's the net increase. 136 00:08:00.970 --> 00:08:03.670 Many more than 6 million illegal immigrants came under Biden. 137 00:08:03.970 --> 00:08:07.319 But it hit nearly 16 million when he left office. 138 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:12.000 And now we think it's about 13.5 million. So the 139 00:08:12.259 --> 00:08:15.540 precise number is we think it's down by about 2.3 million. 140 00:08:15.839 --> 00:08:18.310 So most of the decline in the foreign-born we see 141 00:08:18.350 --> 00:08:21.970 in the data seems to be due to illegal immigrants 142 00:08:22.430 --> 00:08:25.850 coming in much fewer numbers and leaving. 143 00:08:26.250 --> 00:08:30.149 So the total number... illegals as of this summer, according 144 00:08:30.170 --> 00:08:34.389 to your estimates, 13.5 million. What I wanted to ask 145 00:08:34.529 --> 00:08:39.559 Jason now, a lot of people on, frankly, the critical 146 00:08:39.639 --> 00:08:43.779 side among immigration hawks, poo-poo that kind of number saying 147 00:08:43.820 --> 00:08:47.580 it's just too low. And many of them are friends 148 00:08:47.620 --> 00:08:50.519 of ours and they may have some point in the 149 00:08:50.559 --> 00:08:54.419 sense that there's almost certainly an undercount. But Jason, you 150 00:08:54.440 --> 00:08:57.320 wrote something about this. Why do we think the number 151 00:08:57.399 --> 00:09:00.820 isn't dramatically higher? I mean, I suppose, and I don't 152 00:09:00.919 --> 00:09:03.399 think you gave like a range, but I could see 153 00:09:03.460 --> 00:09:05.879 it being a million or two higher than our estimate, 154 00:09:05.960 --> 00:09:09.470 maybe because of undercount, but why isn't it 20 or 155 00:09:09.470 --> 00:09:11.549 30 million people? Why do we not think. 156 00:09:12.500 --> 00:09:14.870 Well, first of all, I think that 13.5 million is 157 00:09:14.909 --> 00:09:17.769 still quite a problem. It's something we obviously have to address. 158 00:09:17.789 --> 00:09:18.370 Yeah, well, exactly. 159 00:09:18.429 --> 00:09:20.570 A matter of public concern here. So I think sometimes 160 00:09:21.090 --> 00:09:22.950 the debate gets framed in a way we don't want 161 00:09:23.029 --> 00:09:27.210 anyway by saying only 13.5, as if that's too small 162 00:09:27.250 --> 00:09:29.250 a number in general. No, I think it's very much 163 00:09:29.309 --> 00:09:32.610 worthy of our concern. The fact is, as some other 164 00:09:32.730 --> 00:09:37.539 demographers have said, people leave footprints. You can't hide in America, 165 00:09:37.980 --> 00:09:42.549 particularly with fertility. We have a calculation here. based on 166 00:09:42.570 --> 00:09:45.149 the fact that if there were 10 million extra illegal 167 00:09:45.190 --> 00:09:49.039 immigrants that we're just not finding in the data, then 168 00:09:49.139 --> 00:09:53.000 based on what we know about the demographics, mostly from 169 00:09:53.039 --> 00:09:57.509 Latin America, most are of childbearing age, about 45% women 170

00:09:57.529 --> 00:10:01.169 and so on, you'd expect about two 200,000 births or 171 00:10:01.220 --> 00:10:04.820 so from that population. And we just don't see it 172 00:10:05.059 --> 00:10:08.059 in birth records or school attendance. And keep in mind, 173 00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:12.279 there's quite an incentive for illegal immigrant parents to register 174 00:10:12.320 --> 00:10:14.820 these things. If you want birthright citizenship, you better make 175 00:10:14.879 --> 00:10:17.860 sure that this birth is recorded in a US hospital. 176 00:10:18.580 --> 00:10:20.759 And also, you know, public schooling is free, you know, 177 00:10:20.779 --> 00:10:23.379 due to a Supreme Court ruling in the 80s. All 178 00:10:23.460 --> 00:10:26.340 children of illegal immigrants can go to school. Why would 179 00:10:26.379 --> 00:10:29.039 you not want them to enroll in school? So I 180 00:10:29.059 --> 00:10:32.710 think for all those reasons, it really can't be substantially 181 00:10:32.759 --> 00:10:35.690 more than this 13 and a half million that we're estimating. 182 00:10:36.049 --> 00:10:38.409 But I think there are some good reasons some people 183 00:10:38.470 --> 00:10:40.730 think it's higher than that. I mean, on this most 184 00:10:40.769 --> 00:10:43.399 superficial sense. People go to Walmart. There's a lot of 185 00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:45.860 people speaking Spanish. Therefore, they must all be illegal. That's 186 00:10:46.200 --> 00:10:49.899 kind of silly. But there are good reasons that people 187 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:52.720 think it's higher even though it's not actually higher. What 188 00:10:52.740 --> 00:10:53.580 is that about? 189 00:10:53.639 --> 00:10:56.340 Well, yeah, I think people are right to think about 190 00:10:56.379 --> 00:10:59.919 kind of the broader population impact of illegal immigration because 191 00:11:00.600 --> 00:11:02.379 even though you have a lot of people who are 192 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:06.039 not illegal, they have legal status, they're often here because 193 00:11:06.220 --> 00:11:09.419 of illegal immigration in some way. The obvious example is 194 00:11:09.480 --> 00:11:10.460 birthright citizenship. 195 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:10.600 Right. 196 00:11:10.919 --> 00:11:11.100 Right. 197 00:11:11.139 --> 00:11:14.960 So if you take the existing illegal population and add 198 00:11:15.059 --> 00:11:18.659 in all of their children, both minor children and who 199 00:11:18.679 --> 00:11:21.440 we think are the grown children, so to speak, of 200 00:11:21.480 --> 00:11:25.279 those illegal immigrants, and then you add in the formerly 201 00:11:25.460 --> 00:11:26.179 illegal immigrants. 202 00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:28.059 Right. The ones that Steve was talking about who get 203 00:11:28.100 --> 00:11:29.299 legalized in various ways. 204 00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:32.039 They married a US citizen or something like that. Put 205 00:11:32.059 --> 00:11:34.759 that all together and you do probably get roughly 30 206 00:11:34.759 --> 00:11:35.419 million people. 207 00:11:35.559 --> 00:11:35.759 Right. 208 00:11:35.860 --> 00:11:39.139 So I'm sympathetic to that sense that people have that 209 00:11:39.179 --> 00:11:42.879 intuitive feeling that there's 30 million illegal immigrants. But you 210 00:11:42.899 --> 00:11:46.460 have to remember, a lot of those 30 million, probably 211 00:11:46.480 --> 00:11:49.120 a majority of those 30 million are illegal and they're 212 00:11:49.179 --> 00:11:52.539 here because of our policies, not because they failed to 213 00:11:52.570 --> 00:11:53.179 follow the law. 214 00:11:53.500 --> 00:11:54.000 Right, right. 215 00:11:54.399 --> 00:11:56.970 Or somebody failed to follow the law, but maybe because 216 00:11:57.009 --> 00:11:58.110 we didn't enforce the law. 217 00:11:58.129 --> 00:12:00.289 Well, birthright citizenship is a perfect example. 218 00:12:00.350 --> 00:12:01.169 I mean, that's a policy. 219 00:12:01.210 --> 00:12:03.190 I know that the Supreme Court recently affirmed it, but 220 00:12:03.210 --> 00:12:05.309 it doesn't stop me from saying it's a terrible policy. 221 00:12:05.370 --> 00:12:05.950 Right, right. 222 00:12:06.029 --> 00:12:06.909 That's the problem. 223 00:12:06.950 --> 00:12:10.500 Absolutely. On the other hand, while I get that 20 224 00:12:10.500 --> 00:12:15.480 or 30 million is an understandable misunderstanding or misperception of 225 00:12:15.519 --> 00:12:20.210 the total illegal population. Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol agent 226 00:12:20.250 --> 00:12:24.169 who's forcibly retired, who was the kind of field operator 227 00:12:24.269 --> 00:12:30.250 of the theatrical Kristi Noem enforcement efforts that culminated in 228 00:12:30.850 --> 00:12:34.039 the fiasco in Minneapolis, he's now going around saying not 229 00:12:34.100 --> 00:12:36.820 only– he used to say there are 100 million illegal 230 00:12:36.860 --> 00:12:40.600 aliens– Now he's upped it to 107 million illegal aliens 231 00:12:40.659 --> 00:12:44.000 as though he's somehow done the math. And so that 232 00:12:44.059 --> 00:12:46.740 strikes me as just– I mean it's preposterous on its face, 233 00:12:46.840 --> 00:12:51.460 but it doesn't even reflect the kind of thing you're 234 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:55.409 talking about where sort of the illegal immigration and its 235 00:12:55.509 --> 00:12:58.029 immediate consequences as it were. 236 00:12:59.070 --> 00:13:01.830 It's unfortunate that he's saying this. I don't really know 237 00:13:01.850 --> 00:13:03.409 where it comes from. I tried to find where it 238 00:13:03.450 --> 00:13:05.169 comes from. It's sort of just a lot of vague 239 00:13:05.250 --> 00:13:09.559 statements more than his numbers. Just to think of it 240 00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:11.559 in one way, there's many ways of thinking about this 241 00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:14.159 in a way that shows it's ridiculous. But one way is, 242 00:13:14.200 --> 00:13:17.090 what are the three largest states by

population in America? 243 00:13:17.110 --> 00:13:20.230 Do you know those? California, Texas, and New York, right? 244 00:13:20.289 --> 00:13:20.710 Or Florida. 245 00:13:20.730 --> 00:13:22.389 Florida actually recently overtook New York. 246 00:13:22.409 --> 00:13:22.889 Yeah, that's right. 247 00:13:22.950 --> 00:13:24.889 But if you add those three up, you still get 248 00:13:24.909 --> 00:13:27.200 a little bit less than 100 million. So what he's 249 00:13:27.440 --> 00:13:30.919 saying essentially is that the combined population of California, Texas, 250 00:13:30.940 --> 00:13:35.250 and Florida– are hiding somewhere in the country. So in 251 00:13:35.269 --> 00:13:38.450 the Census Bureau data, it finds about 50 million or 252 00:13:38.490 --> 00:13:43.470 so foreign-born individuals. So somehow that means we're missing two-thirds 253 00:13:43.690 --> 00:13:47.389 of the foreign-born, two-thirds from the census. It just doesn't 254 00:13:47.980 --> 00:13:50.759 make a lot of sense. And I think Steve alluded 255 00:13:50.799 --> 00:13:52.700 to this earlier, but let me make it a little 256 00:13:52.740 --> 00:13:56.200 more clear when I say that the reason we care 257 00:13:56.240 --> 00:14:01.039 about this is not because we're really offended by the 258 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:03.960 idea of someone saying something incorrect, although as a data guy, 259 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:06.539 I really do want people to be honest with the data. 260 00:14:06.980 --> 00:14:10.299 The practical objection here is that we have so many 261 00:14:10.799 --> 00:14:14.399 very good statistics that can come out of Census Bureau data, 262 00:14:15.159 --> 00:14:17.220 very good in the sense that they're useful for our 263 00:14:17.279 --> 00:14:20.220 side to show that immigration has a lot of consequences, 264 00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:22.870 and a lot of those consequences are negative. We can 265 00:14:22.950 --> 00:14:26.909 use Census Bureau data to talk about population, welfare, crime, 266 00:14:27.389 --> 00:14:30.029 housing impact. We have a paper coming out on that soon. 267 00:14:30.570 --> 00:14:33.610 All these things we can do to add ammunition to this. 268 00:14:34.110 --> 00:14:36.350 And if someone comes along and says, actually, the census 269 00:14:36.389 --> 00:14:39.669 is so wrong, so wrong that it's missing two-thirds of 270 00:14:39.690 --> 00:14:42.250 the immigrants, that means that all this work is useless. 271 00:14:43.029 --> 00:14:45.100 And I think that would be really sad. Not only 272 00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:47.549 is it just untrue as a factual matter, but it 273 00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:51.000 also makes it practically very difficult for us to make 274 00:14:51.039 --> 00:14:51.940 the arguments we want to make. 275 00:14:52.360 --> 00:14:53.639 Can I jump in here for a second, Mark? 276 00:14:53.659 --> 00:14:55.919 Yeah, sure. Okay, so let me just give the listeners. 277 00:14:55.940 --> 00:14:59.840 So we know from school enrollment data how many kids 278 00:14:59.879 --> 00:15:02.779 are in public school. Jason mentioned this. You can look 279 00:15:02.899 --> 00:15:06.870 at it from, say, 2019 to 2025. We have that data. 280 00:15:07.429 --> 00:15:10.409 And it's actually down some, right? Now, we had a 281 00:15:10.450 --> 00:15:13.570 lot of what they call unaccompanied minors. We had family 282 00:15:13.669 --> 00:15:17.309 units come in at the border. There are places where 283 00:15:17.330 --> 00:15:20.370 it's overwhelmed. It really impacted enrollment. But I'm talking here 284 00:15:20.509 --> 00:15:26.539 national enrollment. If you had even 10 million extra illegal immigrants, 285 00:15:26.860 --> 00:15:29.519 that would have had to add 1 to 2 million 286 00:15:29.580 --> 00:15:32.360 kids to public school, at least a million, maybe more. 287 00:15:32.840 --> 00:15:35.879 But the point here is we see a significant decline 288 00:15:35.899 --> 00:15:39.210 in school enrollment, and I'm talking here public school. Now, 289 00:15:39.269 --> 00:15:42.289 the only way to reconcile something like school enrollment with 290 00:15:42.370 --> 00:15:44.750 the idea that the illegal population is 30 million or 291 00:15:44.750 --> 00:15:47.909 100 million is to say, They're sending their kids to 292 00:15:47.980 --> 00:15:49.759 private school that we can't measure as well. 293 00:15:49.940 --> 00:15:51.340 Or they're homeschooling them all. 294 00:15:51.460 --> 00:15:54.399 They're homeschooling them. You know, it's not legal to keep 295 00:15:54.460 --> 00:15:57.440 a kid, even an illegal immigrant kid, out of school. 296 00:15:57.519 --> 00:15:59.480 So you'd have that issue. But one of the main 297 00:15:59.580 --> 00:16:02.179 motives in all the survey data of people coming to 298 00:16:02.220 --> 00:16:05.980 America is the greater educational opportunities for their children. It 299 00:16:06.039 --> 00:16:09.539 seems very odd that they're not taking advantage of free 300 00:16:09.600 --> 00:16:12.639 public education. And as Jason said, the number of births 301 00:16:12.679 --> 00:16:15.039 in the United States is actually down in the last 302 00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:19.399 seven years. So somehow you have to assume that of 303 00:16:19.440 --> 00:16:24.759 the illegal population, about 38% are women in their childbearing years. 304 00:16:25.389 --> 00:16:27.610 So as Jason put out, as I think the number, 305 00:16:27.629 --> 00:16:29.789 if you were to have 10 million extra illegal immigrants, 306 00:16:30.309 --> 00:16:32.629 it should be about a quarter of a million extra 307 00:16:32.649 --> 00:16:35.470 births in the United States, not the significant decline we 308 00:16:35.529 --> 00:16:37.230 see during the border surge. 309 00:16:37.750 --> 00:16:40.750 And there's just not that many people in a modern society. 310 00:16:41.289 --> 00:16:45.149 who were born off the grid. In the old days, 311 00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:47.120 it might have happened.

I'm sure there's still a few 312 00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:49.779 instances of it, but not hundreds of thousands. 313 00:16:49.799 --> 00:16:51.259 Let me give you just one other piece of data. 314 00:16:51.519 --> 00:16:54.559 We don't see it in employer data, right? Employers. So 315 00:16:54.740 --> 00:16:56.980 all these people are here and they're just living in 316 00:16:57.019 --> 00:17:00.440 basements and not working. That seems very hard to believe too. 317 00:17:00.779 --> 00:17:04.529 So in other words, we have a reality check, something 318 00:17:04.589 --> 00:17:06.509 we can check it in, but I'll just add one 319 00:17:06.529 --> 00:17:09.569 more point. I think the main reason people think this is, look, 320 00:17:09.650 --> 00:17:13.539 if you step back Total immigration to the United States 321 00:17:13.579 --> 00:17:16.670 since 1965, that's legal and illegal. All the children and 322 00:17:16.690 --> 00:17:20.890 now some grandchildren they've had added about 90 million people 323 00:17:20.930 --> 00:17:24.710 to the U.S. That's a lot, right? So that's part 324 00:17:24.750 --> 00:17:27.089 of it. And I just see those numbers. And I 325 00:17:27.130 --> 00:17:28.990 have this theory that one of the things that goes 326 00:17:29.130 --> 00:17:32.579 on is that whenever the media covers legal immigration, they 327 00:17:32.599 --> 00:17:35.160 talk about how hard it is. Now, you can argue 328 00:17:35.200 --> 00:17:36.019 it's hard or easy. 329 00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:39.000 I won't. How hard to immigrate illegally? Yeah, legally it 330 00:17:39.019 --> 00:17:39.980 is to the United States. 331 00:17:40.259 --> 00:17:42.019 Right. So they say how hard it is to come. 332 00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:45.079 And the public has a sense that, well, legal immigration 333 00:17:45.140 --> 00:17:49.099 is somewhat restrictive. And so this massive growth that I 334 00:17:49.299 --> 00:17:53.579 see with my own eyes must be driven by illegal immigration. 335 00:17:53.660 --> 00:17:56.960 Nothing could be further from the truth. Legal immigration, permanent 336 00:17:56.980 --> 00:18:00.430 immigration is over a million a year. Temporary long-term immigration, 337 00:18:00.450 --> 00:18:02.559 which I mentioned at the outset. That's got to be 338 00:18:02.579 --> 00:18:04.339 a million a year too, though most of those people 339 00:18:04.380 --> 00:18:08.950 do go home. Overall, there are 38 million legal immigrants 340 00:18:08.990 --> 00:18:13.829 of various kinds, naturalized citizens, green card holders, long-term temporary visitors. Here, 341 00:18:13.829 --> 00:18:17.490 38 million. Somewhere between one out of every seven and 342 00:18:17.650 --> 00:18:20.599 one out of every eight adults in America is a 343 00:18:20.670 --> 00:18:23.680 legal immigrant. If we go back to that 90 million figure, 344 00:18:24.420 --> 00:18:27.900 it's likely legal immigration has added about 60 million to 345 00:18:27.940 --> 00:18:28.240 the U.S. 346 00:18:28.279 --> 00:18:28.680 Population. 347 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:32.099 And illegal immigration, as Jason pointed out, is somewhere around 348 00:18:32.099 --> 00:18:32.819 30 million. 349 00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:37.140 And again, the consequences of illegal immigration, not the illegal population. 350 00:18:37.180 --> 00:18:40.000 How much has it added when you take into account children. 351 00:18:41.279 --> 00:18:45.119 So these are enormous scales, but it's still two-thirds legal. 352 00:18:45.240 --> 00:18:48.740 I just don't think people are aware. I mean, in 353 00:18:48.779 --> 00:18:52.430 many ways, the United States' legal immigration system is so 354 00:18:52.549 --> 00:18:55.670 generous that it's possible you could say that half the 355 00:18:55.730 --> 00:18:59.569 world's legal immigrants reside in the United States, especially those 356 00:18:59.849 --> 00:19:02.430 who have a clear pathway to citizenship. Countries in the 357 00:19:02.470 --> 00:19:04.630 Middle East, say, have lots of guest workers, but those 358 00:19:04.670 --> 00:19:08.529 people have no prospect The bottom line is the scale 359 00:19:08.569 --> 00:19:11.670 of illegal of legal immigration to the United States is enormous. 360 00:19:11.950 --> 00:19:13.730 And I think that's partly what confuses people. 361 00:19:14.009 --> 00:19:16.490 And it also kind of when you talk about it 362 00:19:16.529 --> 00:19:21.579 that way, it distracts attention from, as Jason said, policy. 363 00:19:21.980 --> 00:19:25.119 In other words, it's not just a question of enforcement 364 00:19:25.220 --> 00:19:28.099 not being done well enough, which is a real problem, obviously. 365 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:30.940 Even now, even under this administration, they're not doing enough 366 00:19:30.980 --> 00:19:35.460 worksite enforcement. But it's actually Congress's problem. rather than the 367 00:19:35.519 --> 00:19:38.839 executive branch's problem, because Congress is the one that set 368 00:19:38.920 --> 00:19:42.500 up this legal immigration system. And the president can't just say, yeah, 369 00:19:42.539 --> 00:19:44.930 we're not going to do that. I mean, it's operating. 370 00:19:44.950 --> 00:19:46.430 He can tighten it up or what have you, but 371 00:19:46.490 --> 00:19:51.000 it's on autopilot. And the other thing is, if there's 372 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:55.740 107 million illegal aliens, what's the alternative to legalizing them all? 373 00:19:55.819 --> 00:19:59.069 Civil war? I mean, it's absurd. So it's just preposterous 374 00:19:59.119 --> 00:20:01.730 on its face, I have to say. You guys, if anything, 375 00:20:01.769 --> 00:20:05.569 have been more polite about it than I think it warrants. 376 00:20:05.990 --> 00:20:08.410 One question before I move on to the other thing is, 377 00:20:09.759 --> 00:20:12.859 There presumably is some undercount in this, and this is 378 00:20:12.900 --> 00:20:18.000 something that people critique. Well, they're not answering the

survey questions, 379 00:20:18.059 --> 00:20:21.720 and people just think it's preposterous that illegal immigrants are 380 00:20:21.839 --> 00:20:24.819 sending back or participating in a census survey. So if 381 00:20:24.839 --> 00:20:26.779 you could just talk a little bit about, either one 382 00:20:26.819 --> 00:20:30.980 of you, sort of what is the origin or nature 383 00:20:31.119 --> 00:20:38.309 and maybe scope Yeah, so let. 384 00:20:37.089 --> 00:20:38.599 Me start with maybe the big picture. In terms of 385 00:20:38.619 --> 00:20:41.640 the foreign-born, it is reasonable to ask the question, look, 386 00:20:41.900 --> 00:20:44.410 you're telling me it's down by 2.9 million in about 387 00:20:44.430 --> 00:20:46.690 a year and a half. That is very large, and 388 00:20:46.750 --> 00:20:49.230 I agree. So what we did in our most recent 389 00:20:49.269 --> 00:20:51.970 report is we tried to look to see if we 390 00:20:52.009 --> 00:20:54.980 could find evidence that maybe the illegal immigrants are here, 391 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:58.440 illegal immigrants in particular, but not answering the survey. A 392 00:20:58.480 --> 00:21:02.660 very real possibility, right? So we looked to see if, 393 00:21:02.880 --> 00:21:06.680 for example– The survey does suffer from a serious problem, 394 00:21:06.940 --> 00:21:10.170 and that is the response rates over the last more 395 00:21:10.210 --> 00:21:12.869 than two decades, people have been less willing to take 396 00:21:12.910 --> 00:21:15.829 part in the survey. This long predates the recent surge. 397 00:21:16.130 --> 00:21:19.220 It predates Trump. It predates Biden. But it's a long-term 398 00:21:19.259 --> 00:21:21.819 problem that the Bureau is well aware in trying to fix. 399 00:21:22.450 --> 00:21:25.240 But when we look at those response rates, that is 400 00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:30.079 the people who aren't answering the survey, we don't see 401 00:21:30.119 --> 00:21:33.019 that in any way it's correlated with the size of 402 00:21:33.039 --> 00:21:36.220 the foreign-born. See, if it's the immigrants who are not 403 00:21:36.259 --> 00:21:39.799 taking part in some systematic or biased way, then when 404 00:21:39.839 --> 00:21:42.750 they're not in the survey, you would expect the foreign-born 405 00:21:42.789 --> 00:21:44.509 to fall. That doesn't happen. 406 00:21:45.089 --> 00:21:49.430 In other words, everybody is less likely to answer the survey, period. 407 00:21:49.730 --> 00:21:52.519 It's kind of like in polling. That regular polling, they're 408 00:21:52.539 --> 00:21:53.420 finding the same thing. 409 00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:56.680 Well, there's all kinds of cooperation and things that people 410 00:21:56.700 --> 00:21:58.839 are just less willing to do. People are less willing 411 00:21:58.880 --> 00:21:59.599 to send their census. 412 00:21:59.660 --> 00:22:01.180 But it's not immigrant specific. 413 00:22:01.200 --> 00:22:03.940 It doesn't appear to be. Okay. So there's some other 414 00:22:03.980 --> 00:22:06.460 things we can look at very briefly. We know what 415 00:22:06.579 --> 00:22:09.720 share of people on the survey are refusing to answer 416 00:22:09.759 --> 00:22:13.980 specifically the immigration questions like your citizenship, what country you're 417 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:15.839 born in, what country your parents were born in. 418 00:22:16.250 --> 00:22:18.910 And they don't ask if you're illegal. So that's kind 419 00:22:18.930 --> 00:22:22.230 of our estimate of various attributes. So it's not even 420 00:22:22.289 --> 00:22:24.869 as though they have to check a box that says, yes, 421 00:22:24.950 --> 00:22:25.930 I'm an illegal alien. 422 00:22:26.089 --> 00:22:30.049 Very briefly, you estimate the illegal population by first estimating 423 00:22:30.089 --> 00:22:34.339 the legal population based on administrative data and then subtracting 424 00:22:34.380 --> 00:22:38.599 that from the total foreign born and then adjusting for undercount. 425 00:22:38.970 --> 00:22:41.529 We don't think the undercount's that big. As I said, 426 00:22:41.549 --> 00:22:43.990 I mean, there's lots of other ways in which we 427 00:22:44.069 --> 00:22:46.690 look at this question of whether the survey is not 428 00:22:46.769 --> 00:22:49.309 picking people up. People come in and out of the survey, 429 00:22:49.369 --> 00:22:51.910 and you would expect the new people who are coming 430 00:22:51.930 --> 00:22:54.549 into the survey each month, they would be the ones 431 00:22:54.609 --> 00:22:57.349 who'd be especially reluctant to take part because they don't 432 00:22:57.390 --> 00:23:00.490 have an existing relationship with the Census Bureau that's taking 433 00:23:00.509 --> 00:23:02.289 the survey. And there are other things. We can look 434 00:23:02.309 --> 00:23:06.529 at jobs data. Everything seems to indicate that the foreign-born 435 00:23:06.670 --> 00:23:10.609 is way down. Is the survey perfect? No, absolutely not. 436 00:23:11.289 --> 00:23:14.170 Is there a margin of error? Absolutely. And you need 437 00:23:14.190 --> 00:23:16.529 to take that into account. But the best and most 438 00:23:16.869 --> 00:23:20.940 up-to-date data we have show a huge decline in the foreign-born, 439 00:23:21.299 --> 00:23:24.440 and it looks to be overwhelmingly of illegal immigrants. 440 00:23:25.099 --> 00:23:28.180 And most of those, just to finish it, maybe, Jason, 441 00:23:28.200 --> 00:23:30.380 if you have thought on this, most of it does 442 00:23:30.420 --> 00:23:33.380 seem to have been people who left on their own, right? 443 00:23:33.420 --> 00:23:37.140 Because the number of deportations in that period, even though 444 00:23:37.690 --> 00:23:41.410 DHS has not been real forthcoming in delivering the data 445 00:23:41.529 --> 00:23:45.130 on this, doesn't amount to whatever, you know, in other words, 446 00:23:45.430 --> 00:23:48.390 isn't large enough to have accounted for that decline in 447

00:23:48.410 --> 00:23:49.529 the illegal population. Yeah. 448 00:23:49.569 --> 00:23:52.730 So the number of deportations may well have tripled relative 449 00:23:53.059 --> 00:23:54.720 to what it was on the last year and a 450 00:23:54.759 --> 00:23:58.579 half under President Biden. But that's still not enough. 451 00:23:59.279 --> 00:24:03.380 You know, tripling the level of deportations under Biden is 452 00:24:03.779 --> 00:24:05.640 As a joke that you often say is like being 453 00:24:05.660 --> 00:24:07.740 the best hockey player in Ecuador. It doesn't really tell 454 00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:08.240 you very much. 455 00:24:08.299 --> 00:24:12.109 Right. Now, remember, we're talking about only interior removal is 456 00:24:12.190 --> 00:24:15.190 actually the technical term. So if you're at the border 457 00:24:15.470 --> 00:24:18.069 and you're removed, sometimes you see people count that number 458 00:24:18.089 --> 00:24:20.670 because you got caught at the border or within a 459 00:24:20.730 --> 00:24:24.509 few miles of the border. I'm talking here, interior removals 460 00:24:24.670 --> 00:24:27.910 are clearly way up based on what administrative data has 461 00:24:27.970 --> 00:24:31.269 been released, but it can't account for this. It has 462 00:24:31.349 --> 00:24:35.690 to be people leaving. Now, remember, we're still legalizing illegal 463 00:24:35.730 --> 00:24:39.579 immigrants as well. For example, when a person successfully gets asylum. 464 00:24:40.079 --> 00:24:43.680 And so that's also going on. It's called adjusting your status. 465 00:24:44.339 --> 00:24:47.480 And so that is still causing some out-migration of the illegals, 466 00:24:47.759 --> 00:24:51.279 but mostly it looks like a big increase in just 467 00:24:51.359 --> 00:24:52.420 voluntarily leaving. 468 00:24:52.759 --> 00:24:56.500 Right, right. So I want to talk about the other 469 00:24:56.539 --> 00:24:58.849 thing we wanted to get to is the level of 470 00:24:59.619 --> 00:25:03.569 immigration from Muslim countries since 9-11. And so the point 471 00:25:03.589 --> 00:25:07.609 here was to highlight that this is, even though we 472 00:25:07.650 --> 00:25:12.809 had a serious shock 25 years ago, that doesn't seem 473 00:25:12.849 --> 00:25:17.400 to have been reflected in changes in government policy in 474 00:25:17.420 --> 00:25:20.079 the interim with regard to the immigration of people from 475 00:25:20.140 --> 00:25:23.519 countries where terrorist groups are very active or the governments 476 00:25:23.539 --> 00:25:29.470 themselves are hostile? Whoever wants to give a quick– the 477 00:25:29.609 --> 00:25:32.029 Cliff Notes version of what we found there. Yeah. 478 00:25:32.089 --> 00:25:35.029 So as you point out, look, we thought that maybe 479 00:25:35.410 --> 00:25:39.039 increased vetting of people from the Muslim world, or maybe 480 00:25:39.119 --> 00:25:41.640 we thought that maybe fewer people would want to come 481 00:25:41.720 --> 00:25:45.079 from the Muslim world so that post 9-11, maybe the 482 00:25:45.119 --> 00:25:48.059 numbers wouldn't show a whole lot of growth. Again, we're 483 00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:51.190 looking at Census Bureau data, and that would count legal 484 00:25:51.210 --> 00:25:53.430 and illegal. It would count everyone, but it also takes 485 00:25:53.470 --> 00:25:56.089 into account all the people who both come and go. 486 00:25:56.109 --> 00:25:59.490 And what we found is, as you said, From the 487 00:25:59.549 --> 00:26:02.509 Muslim world, which I should point out, by no means 488 00:26:02.549 --> 00:26:04.890 are we saying that, remember, the census doesn't ask about 489 00:26:05.170 --> 00:26:08.670 your religion. So there are Muslim immigrants who come from 490 00:26:08.730 --> 00:26:13.299 non-Muslim countries, and there are non-Muslims who come from the 491 00:26:13.319 --> 00:26:17.359 Muslim world. That is, these predominantly Muslim countries throughout the 492 00:26:17.380 --> 00:26:20.759 Middle East and North Africa and even into Asia. But 493 00:26:21.140 --> 00:26:26.349 when we look at those countries, we find that basically 2001, 494 00:26:26.349 --> 00:26:29.440 which is when September 11th happened, there are about 1.7 495 00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:32.960 million people from these countries, and now there are 3.4 million. 496 00:26:32.980 --> 00:26:37.039 So it more than doubled over this time period. The actual, 497 00:26:37.160 --> 00:26:42.309 the precise increase was about 103%. Just to maybe put 498 00:26:42.329 --> 00:26:45.650 that into a little context, the overall number of immigrants 499 00:26:45.690 --> 00:26:50.089 in the United States increased enormously by about 58%, but 500 00:26:50.150 --> 00:26:54.230 still not the 103% that immigrants from the Muslim world did. 501 00:26:54.549 --> 00:26:57.240 And of course, if we look at just the U.S.-born population, 502 00:26:57.519 --> 00:27:01.559 which would include the U.S.-born children of immigrants, since 2001, 503 00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:05.450 it's grown by 15%. So the overall immigrant population is 504 00:27:05.529 --> 00:27:09.869 up 58%, many times what the native-born population is, but 505 00:27:09.970 --> 00:27:13.849 the Muslim immigrant population is up nearly twice what the 506 00:27:13.910 --> 00:27:17.599 immigrant population overall is up. And as Mark pointed out, 507 00:27:18.039 --> 00:27:20.200 there are some things about it. I'll just mention one thing. 508 00:27:20.579 --> 00:27:24.420 many of the top immigrant-sending countries from the Muslim world 509 00:27:24.740 --> 00:27:28.299 have either hostile relations with the United States or struggle 510 00:27:28.619 --> 00:27:31.660 with very powerful terrorist movements. Again, 2001 to 2024, the 511 00:27:31.700 --> 00:27:33.900 number of immigrants from, say, Afghanistan is up 476%. 512 00:27:33.900 --> 00:27:34.400 From Pakistan, it's up 93%. 513 00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:35.609 For Iran, it's up 41%.

For Syria, it's up 109%. 514 00:27:35.609 --> 00:27:52.140 And from Yemen, it's up 416%. These are striking numbers. 515 00:27:53.039 --> 00:27:55.140 The pace of immigration from that part of the world 516 00:27:55.700 --> 00:27:58.880 is very high. The growth rates are very high. So 517 00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:01.059 clearly a lot of people want to come from there. 518 00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:04.720 And our immigration policies and our vetting procedures are certainly 519 00:28:04.759 --> 00:28:07.500 not deterring people from coming. Though I should point out 520 00:28:07.559 --> 00:28:10.519 one other thing. These numbers are only through 2024 because 521 00:28:10.880 --> 00:28:13.720 we have more up-to-date numbers and we have looked at them. 522 00:28:14.200 --> 00:28:16.720 But the problem is the Muslim immigrant population is still 523 00:28:16.759 --> 00:28:21.150 a relatively modest share of the overall immigrant population. It's 524 00:28:21.250 --> 00:28:24.529 better to use this 2024 survey, which is done each year, 525 00:28:24.789 --> 00:28:28.049 called the American Community Survey. It's harder to use the 526 00:28:28.150 --> 00:28:30.329 monthly current population survey. 527 00:28:30.369 --> 00:28:35.259 Because it's a survey and the numbers of people responding. Yeah, exactly. 528 00:28:35.400 --> 00:28:36.559 In the American Community Survey, yes. 529 00:28:36.599 --> 00:28:38.839 So we're getting toward the end. But Jason, I kind 530 00:28:38.859 --> 00:28:41.779 of wanted to ask you a broader question about what 531 00:28:41.839 --> 00:28:46.000 is the role or what is the benefit of statistics 532 00:28:46.099 --> 00:28:49.109 like this, of the number crunching that we do on 533 00:28:49.140 --> 00:28:51.859 immigration in Is there something we're getting out of this? 534 00:28:51.980 --> 00:28:54.859 I mean, obviously, nothing's perfect. There's always a margin of 535 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:58.549 error in these things. But can this kind of thing 536 00:28:58.619 --> 00:29:03.650 inform policy in a constructive way? Or are we basically 537 00:29:03.690 --> 00:29:07.829 just coming up with numbers that people can then throw 538 00:29:07.890 --> 00:29:10.549 at each other and argue about? Any thoughts on that? 539 00:29:10.670 --> 00:29:12.789 Well, I certainly hope it can inform policy. I mean, 540 00:29:12.809 --> 00:29:14.930 it helps to clarify a lot of things that we 541 00:29:14.970 --> 00:29:18.109 might not otherwise understand very well. I mean, in the 542 00:29:18.150 --> 00:29:22.630 case of Muslim immigration, I'm working on a group project 543 00:29:22.650 --> 00:29:25.339 that has sort of an international scope where representatives of 544 00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:28.599 different countries are putting together little profiles of immigrants in 545 00:29:28.619 --> 00:29:32.220 their countries, including fiscal impact and crime effects and the like. 546 00:29:32.940 --> 00:29:37.069 And from my counterparts in Europe, their attitude often is, well, 547 00:29:37.329 --> 00:29:39.970 we have a big problem with Muslim immigration, but you don't. 548 00:29:40.200 --> 00:29:40.519 Really. 549 00:29:41.119 --> 00:29:42.740 And it's true, of course, but I mean, a lot 550 00:29:42.759 --> 00:29:46.779 of that is selection effect, whereby we get people with 551 00:29:46.819 --> 00:29:50.420 greater skills in the United States than the European countries. 552 00:29:50.740 --> 00:29:53.640 But I would point out that, again, here's a place 553 00:29:53.660 --> 00:29:57.049 where the numbers help, that Muslim immigrants, I should say, 554 00:29:57.230 --> 00:30:01.509 from predominantly Muslim countries are not necessarily as high performing 555 00:30:01.529 --> 00:30:05.910 as you might think, partially because sometimes people confuse immigrants 556 00:30:05.930 --> 00:30:08.329 from India with Muslims, and most of them are going 557 00:30:08.349 --> 00:30:10.990 to be Hindu, and they do have very high socioeconomic status. 558 00:30:11.470 --> 00:30:13.529 But just looking at some basic welfare numbers here, I mean, 559 00:30:13.549 --> 00:30:16.390 that same group of people that Steve talked about, predominantly 560 00:30:16.410 --> 00:30:19.930 Muslim countries, you know, about half of households headed by 561 00:30:19.950 --> 00:30:22.670 that group are on some form of welfare compared to 562 00:30:22.670 --> 00:30:26.640 30% of natives. So that's not a group that's necessarily 563 00:30:26.680 --> 00:30:29.779 doing extremely well in America. And I think the broader 564 00:30:29.819 --> 00:30:33.609 point here too is there's a kind of truism about 565 00:30:33.619 --> 00:30:38.130 immigration from particular countries, which is that initially the flow 566 00:30:38.230 --> 00:30:40.410 tends to be high skilled, but it becomes less and 567 00:30:40.430 --> 00:30:43.450 less skilled over time. And you can see that with 568 00:30:43.490 --> 00:30:47.119 the Afghan flow, especially when you get refugees, asylum seekers 569 00:30:47.150 --> 00:30:50.440 and the like, they tend to be much more representative 570 00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:54.660 of the country itself and therefore more problematic in both 571 00:30:54.740 --> 00:30:56.119 economically and culturally. 572 00:30:57.319 --> 00:31:00.019 Okay. One of the things, I think one of the 573 00:31:00.059 --> 00:31:04.700 most important things the center does is try to get 574 00:31:04.920 --> 00:31:10.410 the surveys that the government's already doing, asking questions of 575 00:31:10.490 --> 00:31:13.869 them that other people aren't asking. In other words, we're 576 00:31:13.910 --> 00:31:16.990 not going out and conducting the American community survey. The 577 00:31:17.029 --> 00:31:20.039 data's all there. If the Census Bureau or the Homeland 578 00:31:20.059 --> 00:31:24.109 Security Department or somebody wanted to do this analysis, wanted 579 00:31:24.130 --> 00:31:26.750 to ask these questions, they

could, and they'd come up 580 00:31:26.789 --> 00:31:29.289 with basically the same answers we have. It's just that 581 00:31:29.309 --> 00:31:32.819 nobody's answering, nobody's asking these questions. And so I think 582 00:31:32.839 --> 00:31:37.680 this is an important role of what you guys do is, again, 583 00:31:38.079 --> 00:31:44.099 asking the questions of the existing public data that nobody 584 00:31:44.200 --> 00:31:48.059 else wants to ask, or frankly, maybe is equipped to ask. 585 00:31:48.220 --> 00:31:50.700 So thanks for coming in. We're going to have links 586 00:31:50.819 --> 00:31:56.990 to these various reports. on the show notes. And we will, 587 00:31:57.369 --> 00:32:01.799 you know, as the situation develops, we'll try to get 588 00:32:01.880 --> 00:32:05.920 new numbers. And maybe in a couple of years, maybe 589 00:32:05.940 --> 00:32:08.000 a little more than a couple of years, once the 590 00:32:08.039 --> 00:32:11.559 data comes in, we'll have a way of assessing kind 591 00:32:11.579 --> 00:32:14.759 of the full four years of Trump to the full 592 00:32:14.839 --> 00:32:19.140 four years of Biden and get a full picture of 593 00:32:19.519 --> 00:32:22.849 what the comparison was and the impacts on immigration. So 594 00:32:23.410 --> 00:32:26.200 Thank you, gentlemen, and we will obviously have you back 595 00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:29.079 in the future. And finally, I just wanted to draw 596 00:32:29.099 --> 00:32:31.619 your attention to a story in the Washington Post. We'll 597 00:32:31.640 --> 00:32:34.420 have a link to it. It's about the issue of 598 00:32:34.599 --> 00:32:40.440 third country deportations. And this is different from a similar 599 00:32:40.500 --> 00:32:44.529 thing like safe third country agreements, because this isn't about 600 00:32:45.329 --> 00:32:50.390 sending people to apply for asylum elsewhere. This is deporting 601 00:32:50.450 --> 00:32:55.829 people to countries not of their citizenship because their own 602 00:32:55.910 --> 00:33:01.170 country either won't take them or we've decided that there's 603 00:33:01.210 --> 00:33:04.289 a possibility they'd be tortured or for some other reason 604 00:33:04.349 --> 00:33:07.089 we don't want to return them to their home country, 605 00:33:07.170 --> 00:33:10.750 return them to other countries. This is something the Trump 606 00:33:10.789 --> 00:33:15.730 administration has pioneered. The authorization for it has always been 607 00:33:15.769 --> 00:33:19.759 in the law, but nobody ever did it before. And 608 00:33:19.880 --> 00:33:22.319 the Post story is actually a good update. It's got 609 00:33:22.339 --> 00:33:24.339 a lot of sob stories, the usual thing you would 610 00:33:24.380 --> 00:33:28.940 expect from the legacy media. But they reported that more 611 00:33:28.980 --> 00:33:33.880 than 25,000 people have now been deported to at least 612 00:33:33.880 --> 00:33:38.559 28 third countries. In other words, 28 countries have agreed 613 00:33:38.640 --> 00:33:42.700 to take at least some people who are not their 614 00:33:42.819 --> 00:33:46.299 citizens but are illegal immigrants in the United States. And 615 00:33:46.319 --> 00:33:50.559 this is really important. Because a lot of times there 616 00:33:50.599 --> 00:33:53.500 are people who have, say, committed crimes or in some 617 00:33:53.559 --> 00:33:56.980 other way made themselves deportable. But if their own country 618 00:33:57.480 --> 00:34:03.069 won't take them back, up to now, really, the reaction 619 00:34:03.089 --> 00:34:05.569 of the U.S. government has been to kind of shrug 620 00:34:05.630 --> 00:34:08.289 and say, oh, well, and just let them stay here, 621 00:34:08.349 --> 00:34:12.690 even though they're deportable. This is the first time, even 622 00:34:12.750 --> 00:34:15.719 under the first Trump administration, this didn't happen, at least 623 00:34:15.800 --> 00:34:20.510 on any significant level. where they're telling people, no, you 624 00:34:20.550 --> 00:34:24.309 don't get to just stay here if your own country 625 00:34:24.369 --> 00:34:27.510 won't take you back. Or, as in the case of 626 00:34:27.610 --> 00:34:31.690 the Maryland dad, Abrego, who got a lot of news, 627 00:34:31.750 --> 00:34:34.909 we've even talked about it some on this podcast, been 628 00:34:34.949 --> 00:34:38.179 determined by a judge that there's a likelihood he would 629 00:34:38.219 --> 00:34:42.300 be tortured if sent home. But that doesn't mean he 630 00:34:42.340 --> 00:34:45.139 just gets to stay. All that means is we can't 631 00:34:45.179 --> 00:34:49.329 deport him to that country. And so the administration has 632 00:34:49.369 --> 00:34:52.570 really cranked this up. There's a lot of obstacles. There's 633 00:34:52.610 --> 00:34:54.690 a lot of challenges to overcome. You have to get 634 00:34:54.929 --> 00:34:57.590 countries to agree to it. So often there's payments and 635 00:34:57.650 --> 00:35:00.590 stuff involved. There's a lot of litigation on this because 636 00:35:01.250 --> 00:35:04.909 the immigration lawyers want to subvert the enforcement of immigration 637 00:35:04.969 --> 00:35:09.269 law by any means possible. But the administration has persevered 638 00:35:09.949 --> 00:35:13.030 and has carried this out to a significant degree. And 639 00:35:13.090 --> 00:35:17.590 it's an extremely important thing both for the integrity of 640 00:35:17.650 --> 00:35:21.510 the immigration law, but also as a deterrent to people 641 00:35:21.590 --> 00:35:24.260 so that they realize if your own country won't take 642 00:35:24.300 --> 00:35:27.460 you back, that doesn't mean you're going to be able 643 00:35:27.500 --> 00:35:29.659 to stay here. We're going to send you to somewhere else, 644 00:35:30.239 --> 00:35:33.639 send you to Swaziland or Ghana or Mexico. Most of 645 00:35:33.659 --> 00:35:37.059 the people who've been returned to a country not of 646 00:35:37.099 --> 00:35:39.760 their citizenship, in other words, to a third country, have 647 00:35:39.780 --> 00:35:42.340 been sent to Mexico. A lot of them are Cubans 648 00:35:42.400 --> 00:35:46.110 or other Latin Americans, so they know the language. And 649 00:35:46.210 --> 00:35:50.050 Mexico is, you know, a perfectly functional country. But this 650 00:35:50.110 --> 00:35:53.559 is something that sends a message both to illegal immigrants 651 00:35:54.420 --> 00:35:58.840 and to countries around the world that we're not fooling 652 00:35:58.880 --> 00:36:02.239 around anymore, that coming into the United States and committing crimes, 653 00:36:02.659 --> 00:36:06.510 even just being here illegally without committing other crimes, is 654 00:36:06.550 --> 00:36:08.429 something we're not going to put up with. And we're 655 00:36:08.469 --> 00:36:11.269 going to do everything we can to remove you by 656 00:36:11.389 --> 00:36:15.920 any legal means necessary to The administration is sending that message, 657 00:36:16.179 --> 00:36:19.460 and it's long overdue, and it's good to see. So 658 00:36:19.500 --> 00:36:21.980 we'll have a link to the story. We may even 659 00:36:22.019 --> 00:36:24.380 do a podcast on it at some point on this 660 00:36:24.420 --> 00:36:27.289 whole issue of third country removals. But for now, the 661 00:36:27.329 --> 00:36:30.869 story is a good update. That's it for this episode 662 00:36:30.929 --> 00:36:35.150 of Parsing Immigration Policy. Thank you to Steve and Jason 663 00:36:35.210 --> 00:36:39.159 for walking us through the numbers without having to do 664 00:36:39.219 --> 00:36:42.750 too much math. Thanks to Brian Griffith, our producer, for 665 00:36:42.789 --> 00:36:44.909 making this thing work. And thanks to all of you 666 00:36:44.989 --> 00:36:47.340 for tuning in. I hope you'll tune in next week.