The Changing Face of Immigration
Alicia A. Caldwell, Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2019
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In the U.S., illegal immigration surged in the latter part of the decade, and there was a big change in who was trying to enter the country from the Southern border.
As the Mexican economy improved and deportations soared during President Obama’s first term, the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico declined significantly, and in their place came families and children traveling alone, most from the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
By 2014, Mexican nationals for the first time in modern history made up a minority of border arrests. Nearly 140,000 people traveling as families and children traveling alone made up the new majority. Most asked for asylum, saying they were fleeing violence and corruption in their home countries.
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Until recently, the families and children seeking asylum were allowed to remain in the U.S. until their claims were decided. Hundreds of thousands are still waiting for that process to play out amid a backlog of more than one million cases pending in immigration court.
In the federal fiscal year ended in September, 65% of those arrested crossing the Mexican border—about 550,000 people—were either traveling as families or were unaccompanied minors. That figure, on the rise since 2017, set off its own crisis as the Trump administration tried to deter migrants through tougher detention policies.
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The influx of nearly two million people, mostly from the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan, bolstered anti-immigration parties from Greece to Sweden, Germany, Spain and Denmark. It also opened a deep rift between Eastern- and Western-European countries over how to spread the burden of caring for the newcomers.
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By the end of 2016, the U.N. estimated that about 5.2 million refugees had fled to Europe.
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