Today, America has 335 million people, about 46 million of whom were born outside the United States. Watch Just the Facts with Steve Ballmer & USAFacts. The more we know, the better voters we can be.
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00:00Hi, I'm Steve Ballmer. I spent 34 years growing Microsoft, 10 years owning the LA Clippers basketball team.
00:08I love computers, data, and facts. That's why I started USAFacts.
00:14To help understand what our government is up to and what's going on in America.
00:19I'll share with you the facts and data, all from our government, you make up your own mind.
00:26In this episode of Just the Facts, immigration.
00:31But first, a quick disclaimer. As I talk, I do a lot of rounding of numbers.
00:37But the data you see on screen will be more exact. So now, let's roll.
00:44Please note, there's such a swirl of activity on this issue.
00:48Things might have changed since I recorded this in mid-June.
00:52I can't predict the future, but I'll be reading about it when it happens.
00:57Most of us have an immigrant story. My maternal grandparents came to the U.S. from what was then Russia.
01:03And my father came from Switzerland.
01:06What we're focused on here is how the immigration system works today.
01:11And what the data says about how many immigrants we have coming into the country.
01:15I've put things into three groups.
01:17First, authorized immigrants, whose visas offer no path to citizenship.
01:23This includes people allowed here on a temporary basis to work or attend school or to be with family.
01:29While visas are also given to tens of millions of people each year, visiting on a short-term basis like vacation.
01:36I'm going to focus on those who live here as temporary residents of the United States.
01:41Category two is authorized immigrants who have the opportunity to follow a path to citizenship.
01:48This includes those sponsored by a relative or employer, as well as people who have been granted asylum or refugee status.
01:57Category three is unauthorized immigrants.
02:00This is a government term that is a bit misleading because, as we've researched it,
02:05I've learned that it included those who are here in violation of our laws,
02:09but also those who are here seeking asylum according to laws as they have existed since 1980,
02:16as well as migrants who are pre-approved to come to the United States due to humanitarian crises like what's happening in Haiti or Ukraine.
02:26There are others in this unauthorized category that are actually entitled to be in the country, but more on this later.
02:34Okay, now that we have identified our immigration categories, let's dig in.
02:40Group one. In 2022, the federal government awarded just over 2 million non-immigrant visas that do not have a path to citizenship,
02:50but do allow people to live temporarily in the United States.
02:55These visas include everything from temporary agricultural workers to the H-1B visas we would have used at Microsoft.
03:03Reserved for those who must have at least a bachelor's degree.
03:07Foreign students took up another 700,000 visas.
03:11People coming here to join family is another 330,000.
03:16In group two, those living here on an authorized basis with the option of a path to citizenship are the recipients of about 500,000 immigrant visas,
03:29granted mostly to those with a relative who is a citizen who lives here.
03:34Some of these visas also go to immigrants who are coming here for work, who are adopted,
03:40or who are among the 50,000 people who win a spot from the annual global lottery held to diversify America's immigrant pool.
03:50Once these visa recipients arrive in the United States, they are transferred to green card status.
03:56In 2022, there was also an additional 500,000 immigrants who received green cards who are already in the United States.
04:06That's a so-called adjustment of status.
04:09A green card is kind of like Willy Wonka's golden ticket if you're an immigrant.
04:15It allows you to stay in the U.S. for up to 10 years before you need to renew it, and it does provide a path to citizenship.
04:24Refugees are approved to come here while abroad, and about 26,000 of them came to the United States in 2022.
04:33Another 37,000 people who are already in the United States were granted asylum.
04:39Both refugees and asylees can apply for a green card.
04:44In 2022, about a million people became United States citizens.
04:50Let's do a fact check on authorized immigration based on the 2022 data.
04:56Two million people came without a path to citizenship, and 500,000 people arrived with a path.
05:04Add in people who were granted asylum, and you get to 2.6 million new authorized residents.
05:12Group three, unauthorized immigrants.
05:15What is an unauthorized immigrant?
05:18Some examples, people who snuck into the country undetected, or snuck into the country but then later asked for asylum.
05:27People who came to custom officials at the border and asked for asylum.
05:33People who have come here from somewhere in turmoil, like Ukraine, and people who have overstayed their temporary visas.
05:41The Department of Homeland Security estimates that the total unauthorized population living in the United States in 2022,
05:49the most recent number, is around 11 million people.
05:53In 2010, that estimate was actually higher, 11.6 million people.
06:00When our customs and border protection officials intercept someone coming through an official point of entry,
06:07or when they apprehend someone who snuck in between lawful points of entries, they call that a border encounter.
06:15There were 3.2 million total border encounters in 2023.
06:20Of those, 2.5 million, or 77%, were at the southwest border.
06:26Another 392,000 people came through airports, 189,000 people through the northern border with Canada,
06:35and 144,000 people came to our coastal borders.
06:40Right now, we're going to focus on the big number, the 2.5 million people coming through the southwest border.
06:47What exactly happens to all these people?
06:50The first type of border encounter is called inadmissible.
06:55And these can happen only at official ports of entry into the United States.
07:01These encounters occurred 430,000 times at the southwest border in 2023.
07:07The second type of encounter occurs between ports of entry and is called an apprehension.
07:14And there were 2 million of them at the southwest border in 2023.
07:19Now, a very important fact to know.
07:22If a person deemed inadmissible at a border crossing or apprehended between ports of entry asks for asylum,
07:31immigration law requires we give them a hearing.
07:36That's because of the 1967 United Nations Protocol relating to the status of refugees and later the Refugee Act of 1980.
07:48So of the 2.5 million encounters at the southwest border in 2023, let's break them down.
07:541.3 million are permitted to enter the United States and are lawfully released pending an appearance at immigration court
08:03or they admitted into the country for humanitarian reasons.
08:07Those people will remain in the country potentially years as they wait for their hearing.
08:13765,000 of the individuals encountered at the southwest border were repatriated or expelled in 2023.
08:22This includes expulsions under Title 42.
08:26Title 42 was a program where unauthorized immigrants encountered at the border were expelled as quickly as possible
08:35in the interest of U.S. public health during COVID-19.
08:39There were 200,000 expulsions in 2020, 1.1 million in 2021, 1.1 million in 2022,
08:49and 600,000 expulsions in the first half of 2023 before the official end of the public health emergency and Title 42.
08:59311,000 migrants were transferred to the Supervision of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE as it's known, for further processing.
09:11These people might have been detained or released.
09:14ICE on average has 34,000 people in detention on any given day.
09:20118,000 migrants were unaccompanied minors who were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services for care and custody determination.
09:32That sums up the 2.5 million encounters with unauthorized immigrants that crossed the southwest border in 2023.
09:39But it doesn't end there.
09:42The Department of Homeland Security estimates that about 600,000 people in 2023 entered through the southwest border without being intercepted by Border Patrol officers.
09:55Let's step back for a fact check on unauthorized immigration.
09:592.5 million encounters with unauthorized immigrants at the southwest border in 2023.
10:06Of these encounters, 1.3 million people were released into the country.
10:10430,000 more people were transferred to ICE or Health and Human Services.
10:16765,000 people were repatriated or expelled, plus an estimated 600,000 who entered the country undetected.
10:28That means 2.3 million new unauthorized immigrants came over the southwest border into the country.
10:36We do not know how many unauthorized immigrants may have left the country in the year.
10:43For context, encounter numbers at the southwest border ranged between 400,000 and 600,000 per year from 2014 to 2018, reaching nearly a million in 2019.
10:58After a dip in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, encounters at the border went up to 1.7 million in 2021, 2.4 million in 2022, and reached the 2.5 million we discussed in 2023.
11:14Now I'm going to admit to being confused.
11:17Unauthorized immigrant assessments have been flat for a number of years at 11 million people, while the number of people coming into the country has increased.
11:27But our government needs to dig in and get all the required numbers to understand that.
11:34Since many of the unauthorized immigrants are seeking asylum, let's start by looking at the asylum system.
11:41Looking at asylum cases in 2022, about 500,000 people applied.
11:48While waiting for a court hearing, these migrants can get work permits from the federal government after their asylum application has been in process for 180 days.
11:59Here's the problem, though.
12:01This means many unauthorized immigrants have court cases years in the future.
12:07At the end of 2023, there was a backlog of 2.5 million immigration court cases.
12:15In that same year, the courts handed down decisions on 222,000 asylum cases, granting asylum in just 32,000 of those cases.
12:27Now, there are a few other groups who are part of the unauthorized immigrant population.
12:33To start, we hear a lot in the news about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is known as DACA, under which 545,000 people are living here in the United States.
12:46Another big category is what's called Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.
12:51Unauthorized immigrants living here may seek relief from deportation if the State Department deems their country unsafe to return to.
13:02As of March 2024, 864,000 immigrants were in the United States under TPS.
13:10There are also people overstaying their visas.
13:13DHS, Homeland Security, estimated 850,000 people to have overstayed their visas in 2022.
13:22However, there is no data on how long these people actually remain in the U.S.
13:29Finally, let's look at authorized and unauthorized immigration in the context of total U.S. population.
13:38Today, America has 335 million people, about 46 million of whom were born outside the United States.
13:48This is the third year in a row where immigration has been the main driver of population growth, which was 1.6 million people in total.
13:57Out of that, 1.1 million came from immigration, while only 500,000 came from more people being born than dying, a consequence of our declining birth rate.
14:09Nineteen percent of our workforce, almost one in five workers, is foreign born.
14:15I've learned a lot. I hope you have too.
14:18People want to come to America. It's been that way for hundreds of years.
14:24Now it's for you to decide. Is our system working?
14:28What level of immigration do we want to have?
14:31How should things be changed?
14:33The more we know, the better voters we can be.
14:37Just the facts. You decide what you believe.