Almost 19 million illegal migrants are living in the United States, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
“Since our December 2020 estimate, the illegal alien population in the United States has grown by 4.1 million, or 28.2 percent, reflecting an unprecedented wave of illegal immigration during the Biden administration,” the group reported on Wednesday.
The higher figure will add to pressure on GOP leaders and President Donald Trump as they are being pushed by business interests to roll back the popular deportation of all illegal migrants. But the deportations are both popular and beneficial for Americans during the run-up to the 2026 mid-term elections.
GOP members’ ambivalent comments do not say if they are going to reduce enforcement against a huge population of non-violent, employed migrants.
“We got a little hiccup with some of the Hispanic and Latino voters, for certain, because some of the immigration enforcement was viewed to be overzealous,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on March 10. “But here’s the good news: we’re in a course correction mode right now.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok), the incoming Homeland Security chief, opposes any migrant amnesty but has been ambivalent on his preferred deportation policy.
The population of illegal migrants is in addition to the huge annual inflow of roughly 800,000 legal migrants and the resident population of roughly 2.5 million temporary visa workers for white-collar, blue-collar, and seasonal jobs.
The FAIR group explained why their estimate is higher than the estimates provided by groups that favor migration.
FAIR’s 18.6 million includes several hundred thousand who illegally entered the country, but who were given temporary documentation by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border czar.
Also, the Census Bureau changed the way it counts the migrant population during Biden’s tenure:
The Census Bureau’s methodology change validates FAIR’s long-held position that official data, and organizations relying solely on that data, were dramatically undercounting the foreign-born, and thus the illegal alien population. This is because the data in the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) and Current Population Survey (CPS) that demographers and other researchers rely on are weighted based on pre-revision Bureau estimates and will undercount the foreign-born to a similarly
significant degree unless corrected.Only one year ago, estimates of the foreign-born population based on the CPS showed that after four years of mass immigration, the foreign-born population stood at a record high (over 50 million).18 This immigration wave, The New York Times reported, was the largest in American history, surpassing the Ellis Island “Great Wave” era of the late 1890s.19 At least 60 percent of the foreigners who during this wave were illegal aliens. Now, thanks to the Census Bureau’s revision of its foreign-born population estimates, we know that even this record high was understated by millions.
Trump’s policy of deporting all illegal migrants is already improving the economy for ordinary Americans — especially for the millions of working-class Latinos who are seeing wage gains in a wide variety of jobs.
Federal and market data show that wages are up and housing costs are down. Inflation is declining, transport costs are shrinking, crime is dropping, and corporations are spending heavily to help Americans become more productive. The resulting prosperity will likely help to raise birth rates as husbands gain higher wages and wives gain greater confidence in the future.
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