(April 27 2022, Washington, D.C.) — A new analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) finds that during the first year of the Biden administration, the illegal alien population of the United States has increased by about 1 million, adding an additional $9.4 billion in costs to American taxpayers. In total, some 15.5 million illegal aliens now reside in the United States, while costs of providing taxpayer-funded services and benefits to illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children now stands at $143.1 billion a year. These staggering increases in both the size of the illegal alien population and the cost to the American public are a direct result of policies put in place since President Biden took office, concludes the report.
The report, 2021 Update: How Many Illegal Aliens Live in the United States?, reveals how a slew of policy changes both at the border and in the interior of the country propelled rapid surges in both the magnitude and the costs of illegal immigration. Specifically, upon taking office, the Biden administration canceled agreements with Mexico and governments in Central America, and terminated border wall construction. These policies were effectively deterring new illegal immigration before President Biden came to office, and allowed for the expedited return of most of those caught entering the country illegally.
Similarly, the administration abandoned nearly all immigration enforcement in the interior of the country, resulting in record low numbers of illegal aliens who were removed from the country. Under these policies, which directly defy federal laws, nearly all illegal aliens in the U.S. are off-limits to apprehension by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is also severely constrained in where they can arrest even the small segment of the illegal population still subject to removal.
“President Biden and the people he appointed to key positions in his administration have pursued the most radical open-borders policies in the history of any sovereign nation, and these new numbers bear that out,” stated Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “If not for the COVID pandemic, which forced the administration to keep Title 42 in place last year, the additional influx and costs to American taxpayers would have been far greater.
“Rather than reinstate effective border and interior enforcement policies, the administration is doubling down on its ruinous open-border policies and is set to end Title 42 on May 23. These new illegal alien population and cost estimates by FAIR, and the imminent removal of the last effective border enforcement mechanism, leave no doubt that unchecked illegal immigration and staggering cost burdens to the American public are the explicit goals of the Biden administration,” Stein concluded.
FAIR’s new estimates of the illegal alien population are based on analysis of relevant information available from the Census Bureau’s 2020 and 2021 data.
The full report can be found here and below.
2021 Update: How Many Illegal Aliens Live in the United States? PDF
Total-Number-of-Illegal-Aliens-2021-FINAL
- A study by FAIR found that the undocumented immigrant population in the U.S. grew from 14.5 million in 2020 to 15.5 million now
- The conservative group estimates cost the American taxpayer an additional $9.4 billion, up to $143.1 billion per year
- FAIR attributed the rise in border apprehensions to both economic upturn at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic and new immigration policies under Biden
- Tracking the number of unlawful migrants residing in the U.S. is a difficult task, and FAIR admits that any figure is going to be ‘inexact’
- The new estimate comes as migration at the southern border is surging again and in March 221,000 migrants were apprehended, nearly a 20-year high
