Greetings, hope everyone finds themselves well. Still working on other posts, but felt I needed to put something out with it being in the spotlight.
Let me start by expressing that I am pro immigration overall. My family fled Britain in the 18th century after Cromwell’s rampage through Ireland. I had never thought about the Irish/English conflict until I read the words from a relative in 1896; the first Candler to step foot in America had fled the homeland for marrying and Irish woman. Intermarriage was considered a sin & at one point there were death penalties for such. Either way he was outcasted and moved overseas for a new life.
Some brief context on my background with immigration and formulating my position as it stands today.
I grew up in a small southern town in Arkansas that had illegal immigrants working at a chicken plant; everyone knew the situation there, but when it got raided by ICE my Senior year of high school I started wrapping my mind around the situation itself. 2008 was also an election year so immigration, as usual, was a more focused political area.
During the aftermath of this 2008 Chicken Plant raid…I was friends with two Mexican brothers at my church, Frank & Vivien - who were friends with some of the kids of these families and I do not recall the words, I do remember their authentic concern for the humanity. On the opposite side within the church, the conservative voices who acted like these 20 workers which were arrested doing minimum wage jobs no one in town wanted to do (gutting chickens by hand) - these were the people destroying the local economy & dangerous. The disconnect immediately stuck out to me.
My best friend’s family rented houses to illegal immigrants; they had maybe half a dozen or so single family houses. I asked why illegal immigrants over an American & he told me rather than some low budget renter who is half and half chances of being white trash that will cause an issue….illegal immigrants wanted zero issues, they pay cash, and they did not wreck the properties.
My Father was actively involved in the Bush campaigns for presidency and politics was an active discussion in the household. I used to watch my Father (conservative) & my mom’s dad (liberal) argue over varying political topics all the time growing up. I was never a stranger to the conversation, just never concerned about formulating a position up until 2008.
As my opening statement concedes, I would say I am pro-Immigration. I think most people are “pro” immigration and few are truly “anti” - the focal point seems to usually revolve around the rules and stipulations to immigration, not rather it should exist. While there are people who are against the concept and notion of borders at large, these are a very small fraction of the population and do not warrant discussion here.
My observation is that the “liberal” / “conservative” paradigms struggle to make it pass the initial conflict due to the difference of values towards the topic. Most conservatives tend to focus on “securing the border” & the “criminals” or “terrorists” that are coming through. Liberals are focused on the humanitarian crisis. This split is also backed up by the public polling data.
Neither side are happy with the situation at large - which should make arriving to SOME level of compromise guaranteed….but here we are in 2024 with a growing crisis that Texas, like out of a comedy set, is forcing multiple states & multiple federal agencies to deal with.
Let’s examine a few different areas I think are critical and establish a baseline. First, reviewing the global immigration numbers over the last 50 years - right as Vietnam ended so we will see a spike in migration. Contextualizing the typical average of migration/immigration for an extended period will help us determine the level of abnormality that we are currently experiencing. Second, examine the Budget for DHS & Federal Immigration Systems and brief inputs of some solutions. Lastly, analyze other Immigration Systems vs our own to have some comparative capability.
Areas of exclusion that ultimately matter in context that I cannot fit with nuance due to time constraints.
Department of Homeland Security creation in 2002
The Proxy Wars / Genocides / Environmental causes
The Global Human Trafficking Market
Texas Situation (That will be it’s own post)
Examining rather Immigration is Positive or Negative
Immigration In a 50 Year Context
The UNHCR Initially, aka the UN Refugee Agency, was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950 in the aftermath of the Second World War to help the millions of Europeans who had fled or lost their homes. It is a quality global source for migration/immigration information & they have developed international law for the processes and terms behind these topics.
When we are discussing the underlying issue at large we need to think in International Legal terms in combination with our own national terminology. Please keep that in mind.
When people flee their own country and seek sanctuary in another country, they apply for asylum – the right to be recognized as a refugee and receive legal protection and material assistance. An asylum seeker must demonstrate that his or her fear of persecution in his or her home country is well-founded.
There are important differences between the terms ‘migrant' and ‘refugee', which cannot be used interchangeably. Refugees are outside their own country because of a threat to their lives or freedom. They are defined and protected by a specific international legal framework.
The term ‘migrant', on the other hand, is not defined under international law, and is sometimes used differently by different nations & entities. Traditionally, the word ‘migrant' has been used to designate people who move by choice rather than to escape conflict or persecution, usually across an international border (‘international migrants'), for instance to join family members already abroad, to search for a livelihood, or for a range of other purposes. The term is increasingly used as an umbrella term to refer to any person who moves away from their usual place of residence, whether internally or across a border, and regardless of whether the movement is ‘forced' or voluntary.1
UNHCR recommends that people who are likely to be asylum-seekers or refugees are referred to as such, and that the word ‘migrant' should not be used as a catchall term to refer to refugees or to people who are likely to need international protection. Doing so can risk undermining access to the specific legal protections that states are obliged to provide to refugees.
An internally displaced person, or IDP, is someone who has been forced to flee their home but never cross an international border. These individuals seek safety anywhere they can find it—in nearby towns, schools, settlements, internal camps, even forests and fields. IDPs, which include people displaced by internal strife and natural disasters, are the largest group that UNHCR assists. Unlike refugees, IDPs are not protected by international law or eligible to receive many types of aid because they are legally under the protection of their own government.
Asylum is the critical area needing our attention. Asylum is for those who are being persecuted or threatened due to an ethnic, racial, religious, or tribal conflict. This is an application based process where the government needs to discuss the situation with that individual and determine if they meet the criteria.
We have a National Asylum system that provides immediate entry into the nation with governmental assistance vs what can take up to 3 years on a green card application to then start the LPR & naturalization process while working. Could be an 8-10 year process so I understand why people take shortcuts in any system, but not all shortcuts are equal in impact.
Shifting to why the asylum issue is a crisis. Viewing the last 50 years of only displacements image should make the problem self-evident visually.
This is a global issue with 110 million forcibly displaced people worldwide:
36.4 million refugees
62.5 million internally displaced
6.1 million asylum seekers
Around 2/3 of refugees live in poverty with 75% of refugees hosted in low- and middle-income countries and 20% in least developed countries.
Regarding the EU stats, the Top 3 refugee hosting countries in the EU:
Iran (3.4 million)
Turkey (3.4 million)
Germany (2.5 million)
3.1 million displaced people returned to their areas or countries of origin between January and June 2023, including:
2.7 million internally displaced people
404,000 refugees.
The Asylum stats for the EU in 2023 are thus:
In the first half 2023, some 519,000 applications for asylum were lodged in the EU+, up by 28% compared to the first half of 2022.2
Applications for asylum in the first half of 2023 were at the highest level for this time of the year since the refugee crisis of 2015-2016.
At the end of June 2023, the number of asylum cases awaiting first instance decisions reached 682,000, a level only surpassed once since 2017 during the aftermath of the refugee crisis.
Following the refugee crisis of 2015-16, the EU+ recognition rate has swung between 30% and 40%. Post COVID-19, this rate has increased from 32% in 2020, to 34% in 2021, and further to 40% in 2022—a rate which continued throughout the first half of 2023 with 41 %.
Most of the humanitarian budget of the EU €1.7 billion is spent to help forcibly displaced populations and their host communities in 2023.3
According to UNHCR, the number of forcibly displaced people both within countries and across borders as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order was more than double the number a decade ago; there were 51.2 million forcibly displaced people as of the end of 2013 (UNHCR, 2014), and the figure was 108.4 million by the end of 2022 (UNHCR, 2023).This represents the highest number available on record and a 21 per cent increase from 2021, the biggest increase ever recorded between years according to UNHCR’s forced displacement statistics.
By the end of 2022, 71.1 million people were living in internal displacement as a result of conflict and violence as well as disasters (the stock of internal displacements) (IDMC, 2023). Of this total, 62.5 million people in 65 countries and territories were internally displaced by conflict and violence and at least 8.7 million people in 88 countries and territories were internally displaced by disasters (ibid.). It is important to note that displacement by conflict and displacement by disaster cannot always be reliably distinguished because many people can be displaced for one reason, and then get displaced for a second or even third time by a different reason.
In 2022 there were 60.9 million new internal displacements, the highest figure recorded and an increase of 60 per cent from 2021 (ibid.). Disasters triggered more than 53 per cent (32.6 million) of the new displacements recorded; the rest, about 28.3 million, were prompted by conflict and violence (ibid.).
Most of the new displacements triggered by conflict and violence (about 60%) were in Ukraine (ibid.). The five countries with the highest number of new internal displacements in 2022 due to conflict and violence were Ukraine (16.9 million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (4 million), Ethiopia (2 million), Myanmar (1 million) and Somalia (621,000) (ibid.)
98 per cent of the 32.6 million new disaster displacements in 2022 were the result of weather-related hazards such as storms, floods and droughts (ibid.). Floods surpassed storms for the first time since 2016, triggering 6 out of 10 internal displacements due to disasters in 2022, with monsoon flooding in Pakistan causing 25 per cent of internal displacements due to disasters globally that year (ibid.). Somalia experienced its worst drought in 40 years and recorded 1.1 million movements. In Tonga, 2 per cent of the population had to relocate following a very rare volcanic eruption (ibid.). The five countries with the highest number of new internal displacements in 2022 due to disasters were Pakistan (8.2 million), the Philippines (5.4 million), China (3.6 million), India (2.5 million) and Nigeria (2.4 million) (ibid.)
Bringing it local, DHS keeps data on these areas so regarding legal immigration. In short, the totals for legal immigrants who get citizenship each year is less than 1 million & we have had a crazy surge in this number recently. People we give Green Cards to are under 1.5 million. Meanwhile our
For the Terminology here - LPR (Lawful Permanent Resident) is fancy jargon for a Green Card. It is the first step to citizenship which requires one maintain residency for 5 years to then apply for Naturalization processes which is the fancy of way of saying Citizenship.
USCIS welcomed 878,500 new citizens in fiscal year 2023 during naturalization ceremonies held across the United States and around the world. Naturalizations in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 made up nearly a quarter (24%) of all naturalizations over the past decade. That’s a mind boggling stat you should sit and think on for a second.
Thirty-one percent of naturalizations in FY 2023 Q2 consisted of persons from the top five countries of nationality: Mexico, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba (Table 3). In FY 2022 Q2, the top five countries of nationality (Mexico, India, Cuba, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic) accounted for nearly 34 percent of naturalizations.
Approximately 285,000 noncitizens obtained lawful permanent resident (LPR) status in the second quarter (Q2) of Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 (Table 1A). Nearly 123,000 noncitizens issued immigrant visas by Department of State entered the United States as new arrivals, a nearly 25 percent increase from FY 2022 Q2. Over 162,000 noncitizens adjusted status with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from within the United States, about 31 percent increase from FY 2022 Q2. The increase in new arrivals demonstrates a continued return to more typical levels after COVID-19-related public health challenges in 2021 resulted in travel restrictions and closures in the United States and worldwide.
In FY 2023 Q2, 40 percent of new LPRs were from the top five countries of nationality: Mexico, India, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the People’s Republic of China (China) (see Table 1A). In FY 2022 Q2, the top five countries of nationality (Mexico, India, China, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic) represented 39 percent of new LPRs.
The largest LPR class of admission (51 percent) in FY 2023 Q2 was comprised of LPRs who obtained status as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, followed by 17 percent who obtained status as family-sponsored preferences, and 16 percent of LPRs who obtained status employment-based preferences. Refugee admissions, the next largest class of admission, accounted for four percent of LPRs (Table 1B). In FY 2022 Q2, the majority of new LPRs were immediate relatives of U.S. citizens (51 percent), followed by employment-based preferences (21 percent), family-sponsored preferences (17 percent), and asylees admissions (4 percent).
Looking at the most recent data available from the Office of Homeland Security. A total of 25,519 persons were admitted to the United States as refugees during 2022, including 9,012 as principal refugees and 16,507 as derivative accompanying refugees. The leading countries of nationality for refugees admitted during this period were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Burma. The United States also provided protection to 36,615 asylees during 2022, including 14,134 individuals who were granted asylum affirmatively by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within DHS, and 22,481 individuals who were granted asylum defensively by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). An additional 2,561 individuals received derivative asylum or refugee status while residing in the United States based on a relative’s refugee or asylum grant. In addition, 507 individuals abroad were approved as follow-to-join refugees and admit- ted to the United States, and 8,673 individuals abroad were approved as follow-to-join asylees and issued travel documents to enter the United States.
We are not granting a lot of Refugee status annually.
Border Patrol also logs all of its data publicly. In August 2023, U.S. authorities encountered 232,972 people seeking to migrate at the U.S.-Mexico border. 56 percent were children, or parents and children. Most were seeking asylum: 145,278 were released into the U.S. interior with notices to appear in immigration court.
So in one month we have up to triple the amount of Asylum applications than we allow in an entire fiscal quarter for legal immigration applicants. Only 4% of those being granted to refugees who had been granted asylum.
The US is not alone either:
“These are unprecedented times, never in human history have we had so many migrants on the move as we do right now,” Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols said on October 10. “Some 28 million migrants in our hemisphere are moving for a variety of reasons.”
Colombia: more than 5 percent of the population came from Venezuela since the mid-2010s.
Costa Rica: 253,000 people or 5 percent of the population have applied for asylum in Costa Rica since 2018.
Mexico: at current rates, over 150,000 people—a record by far— will apply for asylum in Mexico by the end of 2023.
The number of recently arrived Venezuelan citizens living in the United States is approaching 1 million (adding the roughly half million who were here in 2021 to the 450,000 who have arrived since 2022). But for every Venezuelan settling here, more than 6.5 million Venezuelans are living elsewhere, in Latin America and Europe.
Quickly examining the criminal data - I fully grasp this is obviously not all, but let’s say it’s even half the activity and we can simply double each figure for the other half we miss. The arguments of border security due to high criminal activity and drugs falls apart when we look at the data.
Contrary to popular opinion, we do keep data regarding “Criminal Noncitizens” Arrests.
The term “criminal noncitizens” refers to individuals who have been convicted of one or more crimes, whether in the United States or abroad, prior to interdiction by the U.S. Border Patrol; it does not include convictions for conduct that is not deemed criminal by the United States. Arrests of criminal noncitizens are a subset of total apprehensions by U.S. Border Patrol.
We also keep Drug & Weapon Seizures. These events are objectively low compared to the multi-million that cross the border each year. If even 25% of the documented encounters contributed to criminal activity the #’s would be much higher.
The Budget of the Federal Immigration System
The Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23) Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill includes a total of $82.068 billion, including $60.7 billion in net discretionary appropriations.4
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – $385 million is provided for OSEM for unity of effort over all of DHS Components. $2.068 billion is provided for Management to ensure Department-wide mission support services keep America secure.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – $16.464 billion is provided in base discretionary funding for CBP, as well as $1.563 billion to address increased encounters at the Southwest Border. In total, $7.153 billion is provided for the U.S. Border Patrol for operations, hiring, and Southwest Border surge requirements, which is a 17 percent increase above FY22. In addition, $230 million is provided for between-the-ports technology such as autonomous surveillance towers, and an overall amount of $582 million is provided for CBP investments, a $9 million increase above FY22. The bill includes $65 million specifically designated for 300 additional Border Patrol Agents, as well as $60 million for additional CBP personnel at the ports of entry. Also, $70 million is provided for Non-intrusive Inspection equipment (NII) at the ports of entry. Finally, the bill provides full funding for implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act and other initiatives to combat forced labor.
Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) – $8.419 billion is provided for ICE, along with an additional $340 million to respond to increased encounters at the Southwest Border. Total base funding represents a $319 million increase above the President’s budget request. The bill maintains the current detention capacity of 34,000 funded Average Daily Population.
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) – $9.324 billion is provided for TSA, which is $836 million above the FY22 enacted amount, including $4 million for pipeline security and increased hiring for Transportation Security Officers. In addition, the bill includes $22 million for credential authentication technology, as requested, and rejects the Biden Administration’s effort to eliminate TSA staffing of airport exit lanes.
U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) – $13.675 billion is provided to support the Coast Guard’s domestic and overseas missions. The bill includes $9.7 billion for Operations and Support, a 6 percent increase over FY22 to enhance Coast Guard readiness, including funding for additional operations and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as $1.67 billion in investments to recapitalize critical Coast Guard assets – including vessels, aircraft, infrastructure, and IT.
Secret Service: $2.822 billion is provided for the Secret Service, which is $210 million above the FY22 enacted amount. The recommendation includes full funding for protective services in preparation for the 2024 general election; enhanced detection measures at the White House complex; and full funding to support National Security Special Events. In addition, the recommendation makes critical investments in the Secret Services’ ability to combat cyber-crimes, as well as an increase in funding for the National Computer Forensics Institute to meet operational requirements.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): $2.907 billion is provided for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is $313 million (12 percent) above the FY22 enacted amount and $396 million above the budget request. Cybersecurity efforts which include the protection of civilian federal networks that also benefit State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) government networks, are supported at $1.763 billion, $222 million above the budget request. The recommendation includes an additional $46 million for threat hunting and response capabilities in federal, SLTT, and Critical Infrastructure networks; $17 million for Emergency Communications Preparedness; and $32 million towards increasing regional operations capabilities.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): $5.501 billion is provided in discretionary funding for FEMA operations, investments, and grants, including $305 million for Nonprofit Security Grants (a 22 percent increase above FY22 levels), as well as $19.945 billion provided to the Disaster Relief Fund.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS): $277 million is provided to USCIS, which includes $114 million to fully fund the E-Verify Program, $133 million for backlog reduction, and $25 million for the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program.
Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers: $407 million is provided for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, which provide training for law enforcement across the federal enterprise, as well as assistance to numerous state and local organizations.
Science and Technology Directorate: $901 million is provided for the Science and Technology Directorate, which provides Department-wide research and development solutions to Homeland Security missions.
Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction: $431 million is provided for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, which coordinates federal efforts to guard against chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and health security threats to the nation.
What funding help does Immigration Services get in this 80+ Billion Dollar Budget in 2024? The FY 2024 Budget includes $865.2M, 3,996 positions; and 3,124 full-time equivalents (FTE) in discretionary budget authority for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This funding level represents an increase of $597.2M above the FY 2023 Enacted.5
Meanwhile for enforcement, Border Patrol has 63,843 employees broken down accordingly:
25,836 CBP officers
2,668 CBP Agriculture Specialists
19,357 Border Patrol agents
569 Air interdiction agents (pilots)
364 Marine interdiction agents
363 Aviation enforcement agents
1,104 Trade personnel
There should be little argument that to help alleviate the border crisis, there should be far more emphasis on hiring new USCIS Personnel to process the global influx of migration that is occurring. A 2023 budget of $277 Million is a joke – give it 5 Billion and hire 15,000 USCIS. Strip FEMA of half it’s funding & take 2 Billion off the Coast Guard and it’s that easy. I would also Strip Science & Tech by half; I don’t need military research funded within DHS, keep that in the DoD where it belongs. Get rid of the WMD funding, again keep that under DoD.
What about the Judicial System?
The backlog is also mind boggling. Immigration Courts recorded receiving 686,298 new cases so far in FY 2024 as of December 2023. This compares with 198,569 cases that the court completed during this period. Yikes.
A detailed analysis of case-by-case Court records obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University revealed that at the end of September 2016, the final fiscal year of the Obama administration, the backlog stood at 516,031 cases, or roughly one-sixth of what it is now. The then 278 immigration judges completed an average of around 750 cases each year. The average caseload assigned was 1,850 per judge.
The growth in the backlog accelerated during the Trump years. Compared to September 2016, the backlog grew two and a half times greater by September 2020 towards the end of the Trump administration. The number of judges on the bench had also grown to 484, and average pending caseloads were around 2,600 per judge.
Hiring of new judges accelerated during the first three years of the Biden administration. The EOIR’s latest personnel records show a total of 682 Immigration Judges now on the bench. In addition, each judge closed on average around 975 cases during the latest fiscal year. This is a closure rate nearly a third greater than seven years ago during the final year of the Obama administration. Even so, more judges and higher case closures per judge have still not been able to keep pace with the flow of incoming cases. Thus, average caseloads of the 682 judges now on the bench have jumped to 4,500 per judge.6
With so many asylum seekers stuck in backlogs, delays can be long. If someone is before USCIS, their estimated wait time is more than 6 years. For claims in front of EOIR, asylum seekers are looking at an average wait time of approximately 4.3 years. That said, variations may exist depending on the court where an asylum seeker filed their claim. Recently, the longest delays were at the immigration court in Omaha, Nebraska, where the average wait time was approaching 6 years – 2,168 days.
An entirely other aspect is understanding how there are more court orders being placed as well. This adds additional stress onto a broken system.
In July 2023, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at ports of entry across the United States issued a record number of Notices to Appear—44,900 in total—to immigrants who were found inadmissible under U.S. law. Noncitizens who are attempting to enter the United States may be found inadmissible for a variety of reasons, and an inadmissibility determination does not necessarily mean that the individual will not be allowed into the country on a temporary basis. However, Notices to Appear (NTAs), which put immigrants into removal proceedings within the immigration courts, were rarely used at ports of entry until the Biden administration.
Unlike Border Patrol, which is responsible for immigration enforcement between ports of entry, the Office of Field Operations (OFO) is a separate agency responsible for processing people at ports of entry. According to data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, OFO issued 280,000 NTAs in the first 10 months of FY 2023, a significant increase from 95,000 the previous year and up from about 48,000 five years ago in FY 2018.
Our budget for this is simply a joke by these annually escalating figures.
The FY 2023 budget request for EOIR totals $1.35 billion.7 That’s it. This should have a minimum of 7-10 Billion over the next 5-10 years before shrinking back down. We need 3,000-5,000 judges we do not possess in the workforce even if we could wave a wand and get funding. In 2023, the salary for an Executive Judge is $195,000.8 We would need entire current budget of the EOIR to simply cover judges. Thus why the offices is drastically under budgeted.
Critiquing the Budget is the easy part though. Determining what the goals and expectations are for an Immigration system and the Immigrants in that process are much more complicated. There will be mismatched values in this realm, which is what we see naturally in the way we all approach this topic differently.
For myself? I have respect for the people who risked their entire lives to get here. I have empathy for their situations of poverty and suffering. I understand & appreciate the desire for a better life. Yet we cannot save the world, nor is that our responsibility. We take care of ourselves so we can therefore take care of others; the same notion of loving yourself to love others.
The US is decaying from the inside and cannot even take care of its own citizens. Highest level of Homelessness in history with over 650k. We can’t get basic healthcare or housing for our own people. Our nation is seeing massive levels of suicide and overdose due to a mental health crisis – we do not have enough resources for our own public as is. We have a debt crisis between student, credit card, auto, and housing affordability crisis on top of a governmental deficit that has led to a national debt that grew more in 20 years than the 100 before it. We have only run a Government Surplus 5 times in the last 50 years – we are not good at balancing our budget sheet out of a deficit to reduce the National Debt. Ever since Reaganomics – the National Debt9 has exploded. Our total National Debt is over $33 Trillion. It was $10 Trillion in 2001. From 1943 to 1983 the National Debt went from $4.4 Trillion to $3.5 Trillion…then boom. Wildly enough, Clinton is the ONLY modern president to achieve a Surplus.
Other Immigration Systems
Some information has already been compared between hemispheres focusing on the EU and how other systems are experiencing the immigration, but I wanted to do a short comparative to typical policies for immigration to show the US is not abnormal or that strict in its immigration.
I want to take everybody’s beloved Scandinavian liberal havens as an example here since these nations have great education, healthcare, work, and overall happiness of the population.
Regarding how long residency requirements are in varying nations to be granted citizenship. Norway is the shortest at 3 years. Finland & Sweden demand 5 years. Denmark is the steepest at 8. The US requirements are not abnormal in this regard sitting at 5 years. The EU is also 5 years mind you.
The Scandinavian nations never see more than 75k immigration / asylum a year & they live across the Baltics from all the former USSR nations. Finland borders Russia…It’s not like that haven’t seen immigration conflicts including the Ukraine war.
Outside Norway, who is pretty chill on their process - Finland is moderate and Denmark is difficult. Sweden is the most difficult. It’s harder for non westerners to immigrate to these nations compared to a lot of other nations, and what I would say is more “the Asians of the EU”, meaning they have strong value systems that do not result to strong multicultural roots - they are more traditionalists in the nationalist arena and would rather immigrants seek to join their value systems vs creating a multicultural safe haven for varying value systems. Which is a separate philosophical topic I am not rabbit holing down.
Let’s use Finland since it’s moderate and has been facing a high spike of asylum & immigration due to the Ukraine conflict.
From their own government site - they average 5000 asylum seekers annually. For 2022 - 4,728 asylum applications by refugees were received in 2022 in Finland — according to UNHCR. Most of them came from Ukraine, Russia and from Afghanistan. A total of 1,509 decisions have been made on initial applications. Around 61% of them were answered positively. 39 percent of asylum applications have been rejected in the first instance. The most successful have been the applications of refugees from Syria and from China.
Meanwhile in the US. We have over 3 million cases backlogged because of 200k each month flooding the system. Of the 773k cases the immigration system did handle on asylum - they rejected 437k and granted 319k. We spend a lot of resources rejecting cases that should have originated in non refugee citizenship.
Concluding Thoughts
It does not take a genius to figure out the level of asylum seekers the global economies are experience are not sustainable long-term and that includes the US. The data is abundant and it is clear - our system is ill equipped to handle the mass migration in the world is experiencing & we have to get the border under control. Which means telling a lot of suffering humans who simply want a better life to get in line legally like everyone else. I do not know many humans who do not want a better life.
Unfortunately we are in an ever growing competitive global economy, and we have so many immediate struggles to deal with internally before we start trying to tackle solving the poverty of everyone else outside our nation. Just like I do not feel like we should police the world, even when bad things are happening, we are not saviors either.
In the next post, I will tackle Texas and what’s going on there between the bussing of migrants to sanctuary cities and the collapse of NY/Chicago which has basically forced this conversation to the mainstream on both sides. The fence is a distraction so the public does not learn how much public funding is going to provide for these people while our own populations suffer.
I hope no matter how much you love immigration that you see the numbers are simply not sustainable & it is delusional to assert we have the funds to provide for everyone. On the opposite side, no matter how anti-immigration one may be that we understand the notion that these are often bad actors & criminals crossing the border - by the data itself - is simply delusional.
Other Interesting Material
Compassion Fatigue 2024 - Examines EU attitude shift towards Immigration.
US-Mexico Border - Examines 1980’s forward Immigration Policy Shifts