Illegal Immigrant Population Increases More Than 1 Million in Last Year

Summary

This week’s episode of the Center for Immigration Studies’ weekly podcast highlights a new report, which provides an estimate of the illegal immigrant population. The analysis finds that the illegal immigrant population increased 1.1 million for the year starting January 2021, when Biden took office. The Center’s preliminary population estimate for February 2022 is 11.5 million.

Dr. Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research and the report’s lead author, discusses the importance of this new estimate. Until this analysis was published, the latest numbers available were for 2018. He explains the various ways the population can be counted and how the dips and increases in the population numbers can be explained by the policies governing immigration at the particular times. Camarota also weighs in on past reports that estimated the population to be vastly larger than the 11 million typically referenced.

In the closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and the host of Parsing Immigration Policy, wishes the audience a happy National Border Control Day. March 31 is the birthday of late civil rights icon Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers union and a fierce opponent of illegal immigration and supporter of tight border controls. In a 1974 interview, Chavez said, “There’s an awful lot of illegals coming in. . . . They’re coming in by the thousands, it’s just unbelievable. See, they’re coming in with the consent of the immigration service.” What would Chavez think about the crisis at the border today?