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It is true that there have been more arrests at the border in 2018 than in 2017, a development that prompted the president to launch strong criticism of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen. But by 2017, the arrests at the border had reached their lowest level. | Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images
Immigration
To find a year with fewer arrests at the border than in 2017, we would have to go back to 1971.
Throughout this election season – and since he's declared his candidacy for the presidency – President Donald Trump has labeled illegal immigration a "crisis."
"I would like to provide the American people with an update on the crisis on the southern border," said the president in his Thursday speech on the subject, "and the crisis is real".
History continues below
But the numbers tell another story.
The word "crisis" usually describes a problem that is getting worse. According to Customs and Border Protection, arrests along the south-western border – the standard measure used to calculate illegal crossings of the border – amounted to 396,579 for the 2018 fiscal year, which it's over on October 1st. This figure is lower than the average of the previous decade (400,751). It is also lower than the number of arrests at the border of 2016, 2014 and 2013.
It is true that there have been more arrests at the border in 2018 than in 2017, an evolution that prompted Trump to launch sharp criticisms against homeland security , Kirstjen Nielsen, and that led the Attorney General Jeff Sessions to impose – without consulting the DHS – the border arrest "zero tolerance" policy that led to soaring family separations last spring.
But by 2017, border arrests had fallen to historic lows. to find a year with fewer arrests at the border, we have to go back up to 1971. Indeed, a September 2017 report from the Department of Homeland Security bragged – somewhat embarrassing as Trump was looking for to get funding for a wall along the wall. the southern border – that "the southwestern land border is more difficult to cross illegally today than ever before".
And border arrests over the last decade, averaging 400,000 per year, are very small compared to recent history. In the 1980s and 1990s, border arrests were rarely less than 1 million. Arrests at the border peaked at 1,643,679 in 2000 and remained close to one million euros until the last two years of George W. Bush's presidency.
The reinforcement of border controls has probably helped to explain the decline in border arrests in the late 2000s, but experts agree that the main reason is the decline in the number of illegal crossings at borders. the Mexicans, initially attributable to the improvement of the Mexican economy and later to the great recession of 2007-2009.
Once the recession ended, Mexico's borders remained low. in 2017 alone, the population of immigrants born in Mexico to the United States has dropped by more than 300,000 people, according to an analysis of census data by Pew Charitable Trusts. "The sudden fall," reported Pew, "appears to be an acceleration of the long-term trend of Indigenous Mexicans to return to their country."
As Mexican border crossings decreased, the number of Central American border crossings increased. According to Pew, the US population of the countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in the North Triangle has more than tripled since 1990, accelerating the trend that began in the 1980s with the rise of violence in these countries. But this substantial increase in immigration to Central America, for the most part illegal, did not offset the decline in Mexican immigration.
A common rationale for declaring an immigration crisis does not lie in the number of immigrants crossing the border illegally, but in the chaos that they create after their arrival. "Republicans … want to create strong borders," said Trump in his Thursday speech, "he wants to eliminate all crimes because of the borders, of which there are many."
But study after study showed that immigrants were committing crimes at a lower rate than the general population. In a March study specifically focused on undocumented immigrants, sociologist Michael Light of the University of Wisconsin examined the relationship between illegal immigration and violence in 50 states and in Washington over a period of 24 years ending in 2014, a period that has including arrests at the border. His conclusion: "Undocumented immigration does not increase violence. On the contrary, the relationship between illegal immigration and violent crime is generally negative. "
Another justification for qualifying immigration crisis is that the wages of native-born workers are lower. But economists have struggled to find evidence of this. Harvard economist, George Borjas, who advocates for more restrictive immigration policies, concluded in his 2016 book "We Wanted Workers" that high school dropouts were the only group of native-born workers to have lost a job. significant income (about 3%) in the long term. as a result of immigration in the highest years of 1990-2010. People who graduated from high school but who never graduated from college – one of Trump's major constituencies – actually realized salary gains at long term as a result of this "supply shock," Borjas said.
