Part one of a three-part series
(CN) — Since 1954, the primary driver of immigration to the United States has been the United States.
Before then, the primary drivers of immigration to the United States were problems in other countries, as well as the lure of our own. But since 1954, the primary drivers have been U.S. policies, foreign and domestic, and their aftermath. (The importance of 1954 as a hinge year in immigration will be covered in Part II of this series.)
Despite Republican wailing about the so-called immigration “crisis” at our southern border today, it is nothing of the sort. Immigration arrests nationwide, and in the nine Southwest sectors (which account for more than 95% of nationwide Border Patrol arrests) have been far below the historical average of the past half century in every year since 2007.
(Statistics from U.S. Border Patrol documents are appended at the end of this article.)
Here is a brief recap: In the 45 fiscal years beginning in 1976, the Border Patrol reported that it arrested 42,163,461 people, an average of 936,966 a year. Arrests in those years in the nine Southwest Border Sectors (stretching from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas) totaled 40,406,682, an average of 879,926 a year.
Southwestern Sector arrests, then, have accounted, on average, for 96% of Border Patrol arrests in the past 45 years. (In this millennium, SW Sector arrests account for 97% of total arrests.)
Taking these numbers as our baseline of Border Patrol arrests over two generations, where do we stand today?
The Border Patrol reported 405,036 arrests nationwide in FY 2020: 43% of its average annual arrests since 1976. In the Southwest Sectors, the Border Patrol reported 400,651 arrests in FY 2020: 46% of the 45-year average.
During the four fiscal years of the Trump administration, immigration arrests nationwide totaled 1,979,210 — 53% of the 45-year average. The 1,952,654 arrests on the Southwest border in those years amounted to 54% of the 45-year average.
So how, or why, is our present situation a “crisis”?
True it is that during a worldwide pandemic it’s wise to curtail international travel — though it seems unfair to blame penniless refugees for it, rather than wealthy jet-setters flying home from around the globe. Also true is that the Trump administration’s vile “Remain in Mexico” program probably reduced Border Patrol arrest statistics a bit; but with arrest numbers at about half the average of the past two generations, it’s still hard to see that our situation is a “crisis.”
If it is a crisis, perhaps Mexico might allow U.S. health care workers to vaccinate the thousands of desperate people on our common border. We might get some good press out of that. And “good press” — not public health — been the goal of every powerful president or prime minister since the pandemic began: Xi, Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Erdoğan, Vladimir Putin and Boris Johnson.
An ancillary question, for my brothers and sisters in the press, is: Why did they swallow this “crisis” narrative without looking at the numbers, and history?
In the years I spent on the border in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, doing paralegal work in immigration prisons for pro bono attorneys representing Central America refugees, annual arrests never dipped below 1 million. In fact, from 1983 to 2006, in only four years were there fewer than 1 million arrests, and in all of those years save one, the Border Patrol nabbed more than 900,000 people.
Yet the last time nationwide immigration arrests topped 1 million was in 2006, according to the Border Patrol’s own statistics. So, again, where is our crisis?
I’ve given you numbers today. Tomorrow we’ll look at history.
Here is the Border Patrol’s own record of immigration arrests in the past 50 years, tabulated by fiscal year (Oct. 1-Sept. 30).
