Donald Trump

Illegal immigration across the southwest border surged 200 percent in March compared to the same month last year, according to Homeland Security statistics released late Wednesday that back up White House’s claims that things are quickly deteriorating on the border.

The year-over-year surge is by far the largest in the records, which date back to 2011, and it could be a signal that the Senate’s debate on legalizing illegal immigrants earlier this year has sparked a new wave of migration.

The Border Patrol and officers at the ports of entry nabbed 50,308 people in March — up from less than 37,000 in February, and three times the 16,588 people apprehended in March 2017, when President Trump’s tough enforcement talk had sparked a major drop in illegal immigration attempts.

Nearly 400 sheriffs across the country are calling on the Republican-controlled Congress to follow through on President Trump’s popular immigration agenda by securing the nation’s porous borders and criminalizing sanctuary cities.

Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson of Bristol County, Massachusetts, has gathered with about 380 sheriffs from across America, representing 40 states, to ask Congress to push Trump’s agenda that would help decrease and end illegal immigration to the United States.

“Enough is enough,” the sheriffs write. 

The sheriffs faulted Congress for failing to enact reforms that would drastically reduce illegal immigration to the U.S., writing that their lack of effort to end illegal immigration has “undermined our ability to keep our communities safe.”

Illegal immigration, resulting in 12 to 30 million illegal aliens now living in the U.S., has come at not only the expense of American citizens, but also local law enforcement agencies that do not have the resources or manpower to take on the issue.

Any DACA amnesty must come with safeguards to prevent another wave of illegal immigration, i.e. and an end to Chain Migration and mandatory E-Verify for all employers.

Legalizing 2 million illegal immigrant “Dreamers” would cost the government $25.9 billion over the next decade, as those now-legal people would claim more tax, education and other benefits they haven’t been able to get before, the Congressional Budget Office said Friday.

The CBO also said newly legalized Dreamers would sponsor 80,000 more immigrants to enter the country as part of “chain migration.”

Immigrant-rights activists have argued that legalizing Dreamers would be a financial boon to the country, but the CBOand the Joint Committee on Taxation suggested otherwise, saying that while they would pay somewhat higher taxes in to the government, they would take far more out of it.

The findings could be a blow to activists who have demanded the bill be included in any year-end spending deal. Congress already struggles to find offsets for other spending, and digging a hole more than $25 billion deeper could be difficult.

Immigration to the U.S. hit a low after the Great Recession but came roaring back in the later years of the Obama administration, with 1.8 million migrants arriving in 2016 alone, according to an analysis being released Thursday.

The 1.8 million would match the U.S. record set in 1999, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which extrapolated the 2016 numbers based on the first six months of that year.

The migrants included new green card holders, signifying permanent legal residence, as well as illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and long-term “visitors,” such as guest workers and students, many of whom eventually became permanent residents.

The numbers are 53 percent higher than in 2011, when the recession tamped down migration patterns, with just 1.1 million entering. The number grew to 1.5 million by 2014, topped 1.6 million in 2015 and is now projected to be about 1,796,000, the center said.

“These dramatic increases are truly extraordinary,” said Steven A. Camarota, research director at the center and one of the report’s authors.

The President’s budget for next year is out, but I have to be completely honest with you, going through these numbers is not my thing!

And, consider that it is Congress that will in reality set the agenda and budget for refugee admissions by how much money they are sending to the program and ultimately out to the federal resettlement contractors.

In searching around this morning, I’ve found several indicators of what Trump might do, what he has done, what the budget might dictate, and how the contractors are reacting, and I will leave it to you (who have more patience to wade through numbers than I) to analyze the numbers.

Just so you know, as of today (5/24/2017), note (from Wrapsnet) that Trump is now at 45,172 admitted refugees for this fiscal year (FY2017 ends on September 30th). (Average refugee admissions for the last ten years is around in the low 60,000s.)