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Is it really a problem though?

It seems to be, given how many people voted for "mass deportations".

It also makes it easier for employers to get away with poor working conditions for those workers.


Nope. While there was a large increase in immigrant inflows, there is no evidence their enforcement decisions were significantly different than e.g. Trump 1.

What the statistics actually show is that the United States was a far more attractive destination for immigrants under Biden, but that enforcement policies were largely the same. That makes sense since enforcement policy is mostly set by Congress and not by POTUS.

The increased appeal of the US is entirely explained by the fact that the US economy was excelling far beyond any country in the world, and especially any country in the western hemisphere. At the same time, Central and South America were getting hit by successive political and economic shocks amplified by COVID.

The significant reduction in immigrants towards the tail end of Biden is not because they suddenly decided to "follow the law" and "close the border." It's that they decided NOT to follow the law anymore and to unilaterally ignore the asylum laws that Congress actually sets.

This was later struck down in court: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/district-court-strikes-d...

So really what you're seeing is the difference between the US being a desirable place to come to versus an undesirable one. I'm sympathetic to the argument that there's moral hazard involved in making the US appear to be highly desirable to people who we don't want to accept, but I'm not sympathetic at all to the view that that means the executive can simply ignore whatever laws they want, or they can turn the US into such a dystopian hellhole that only the most desperate immigrants around would bother attempting entry.

Some additional sources:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re...

https://www.cato.org/blog/data-show-trump-wouldve-released-m...




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