Here's a little factoid you might want to have handy for those who, when the border crisis is mentioned, start bandying about Ellis Island and that our country was founded by immigrants and by its very nature supports immigration.
I have zero problem with the last part. Immigrants who come here legally I embrace and thank them for doing so.
But let's take a closer look at the scale of what we're dealing with currently. First, Ellis Island officially operated from January 1, 1892 until 1954. President Benjamin Harrison designated it in 1890 as the site of one of the first federal immigration stations. So it actually began processing immigrations earlier than 1892; let's call it 1891, meaning that it was in operation for 63 years.
How many immigrants were processed through Ellis Island during its 63 years of operation? A total of a little
over 12 million.
Now let's consider how many U.S. Customs & Border Protection "enforcement encounters" have officially been reported along the border with Mexico. Note for comparison that fiscal year 2022 saw a 37.5% increase in encounters along the southern border, but encounters elsewhere were also up; the total across all of the CBP was up 27%.
Official numbers have not yet been released for September 2023, but it's almost a given that the southern border reached an all-time high number of monthly encounters. From
a Reuters news article, "more than 142,000 migrants [had been encountered] at the U.S.-Mexico border in the first half of September." I'll estimate that as 260K for the totals below.
Joe Biden assumed office in January 2021, and here are the official number of "enforcement encounters" at the southern border:
- 2012: 2,035,585
- 2022: 2,579,067
- 2023: 1,746,983 (with 3 months remaining)
- TOTAL: 6,361,635
This administration has been in office for less than three years, and we have had official enforcement encounters with
half the number of all people processed at Ellis Island during the span of its 63-year history.
As of May 2023, the best working estimates were, in addition to the processed and recorded encounters, "
At least 1.5 million illegal immigrants identified as 'gotaways' have crossed the border under the Biden administration."
If we stay static at that 1.5 million number (though I'll wager it's closer to at least 2 million) we end up with about
7.8 million people.
In only 33 months, this administration has seen a number that's equivalent to 65% of
all immigrants processed through Ellis Island in the 63 years of its operation from 1891 to 1954.
