If America is facing a crisis at the border, then why is the unauthorized immigrant population declining? That is the question raised by a new studyfrom the Center for Migration Studies of New York and other recent data.
For the past several months, including in a January 8, 2019, televised address, Donald Trump has argued America faces an illegal immigration crisis. Administration officials have supported this viewpoint in speeches around the country, including in several high-profile events at the border.
The data do not support a picture of an increasing number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. “While the president has focused the nation’s attention on the border wall, half a million U.S. undocumented residents from Mexico left the undocumented population in 2016 alone, more than three times the number that arrived that year, leading to an overall decrease of nearly 400,000 undocumented residents from Mexico from 2016 to 2017,” according to new research from Robert Warren, a demographer and senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies. (Emphasis added.)
