David J. Bier
This is Part 4 of the origins of the border crisis. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
What Caused the Crisis
Four factors primarily caused the border crisis:
- the unprecedented difference in labor demand between the US and the developing world;
- the unparalleled access to information about how to travel illegally to the US;
- enforcement policies—namely Title 42—that created perverse incentives to repeatedly cross illegally; and
- perverse legal migration policies that caused people to cross illegally rather than legally.
Explanation 1: Labor demand
The number of job openings reached nearly two per unemployed person in the United States. In absolute terms, there were twelve million open jobs in 2022. Both numbers were the highest recorded by the government since the job openings survey began in 2001. There were more open jobs each month from February 2021 to August 2024 than in any month before February 2021. As I’ve pointed out, the relationship is much more pronounced for migration from Central America than from Mexico in large part because so many Mexicans can cross legally.
The rise and fall of the high labor demand economy tracks the rise and eventual fall in Border Patrol arrests. US jobs fund migration, even by asylum seekers, because immigrants can borrow against their future earnings to pay for smuggling fees and other costs. But more than the unprecedented increase in jobs inside the United States, the relative difference between immigrants’ home countries and the United States mattered more. While other countries lagged, the US labor market took off in 2021. As one Mexican border crosser told the Wall Street Journal in 2021, “The economy is going to [react] very quickly in the United States. They are already reopening.”
Explanation 2: Access to migration information
The second critical component of the Biden border crisis was how quickly information on how to migrate illegally was communicated. Jobs provided the funding for people to immigrate, but the Internet and social media provided a detailed how-to guide. From 2018 to 2021, the share of northern Central Americans with Internet access more than doubled. For Nicaraguans, the increase was even more considerable. Colombia and Ecuador both saw very significant increases in Internet access. No reliable data are available for Venezuela and several other countries.
Social media, in particular, connected immigrants with smugglers and other information. In 2021, Mexican officials found that smugglers were “communicating via social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube,” and that they use these sites to “update migrants on impending checkpoints, when freight trains they can jump on pass, where to stay and how to navigate immigration laws.”
By 2022, 70 percent of immigrants in Mexico were getting information about where to go from social media. TikTok and other apps also allowed immigrants to explain how to migrate without smugglers, freeing more immigrants to take advantage of US labor market opportunities.
Explanation 3: Perverse enforcement policies:
Following the advice of his critics, Biden used Title 42 to restrict asylum during his first year and a half. He then discovered that it was not working. It created more crossings as people repeatedly tried to enter illegally. Biden then tried to end Title 42 in 2022, but Republican states sued and prevented Biden from doing so for another year when it finally ended in May 2023. As the graph shows, not only did Title 42 fail to deter crossers, but it also resulted in more arrests of repeat crossers as people tried over and over to evade Border Patrol. About half of all the people arrested under Title 42 were previously arrested under Title 42. This compared to a 7 percent recidivism rate in 2019. Single adults from Mexico and north Central America were the vast majority of those expelled under Title 42, and their arrests increased rapidly during the Title 42 regime.
For some crossers, being returned quickly to Mexico was an incentive to come rather than a drawback. Before the Title 42 regime, there was a high probability of criminal prosecution and lengthy detention—between one-third and a half of Mexican and northern Central American single adults were prosecuted. After Title 42, that threat disappeared. Instead, they were returned to the other side of the border where they could immediately try again, leading to repeated arrests of the same individuals.
The fact that evasions spiked so high further proves that releases were not the primary cause of the crisis. People were determined to come regardless. Once Biden ended Title 42, evasions fell by over 70 percent. In other words, doing the opposite of what Biden’s critics wanted helped secure the border (as I predicted).
Besides Title 42, Biden made another enforcement mistake. The biggest problem for deportations came from Venezuelans and other immigrants who could not be expelled to Mexico and who were logistically difficult or impossible to deport to their home countries. In response, Biden convinced Mexico to ban visa-free legal entries into Mexico for Venezuelans in January 2022, which had previously allowed Venezuelans who could afford to buy plane tickets to Mexico to travel to the US-Mexico border. Biden also convinced Belize and Costa Rica to ban Venezuelans as well, cutting off alternative flights for them.
This “closed border” policy initially reduced arrivals, but the Venezuelan ban backfired. As I predicted would happen, tens of thousands of Venezuelans who previously would have bought plane tickets instead paid smugglers to bring them through the Darien Gap, the jungle land bridge connecting Colombia and Panama. Ultimately, more Venezuelans started arriving every month—including destitute people who otherwise would not have been able to travel by plane.
As a result of the “wealthy” Venezuelan investments in the Darien Gap, travel time through the jungle fell from more than a week to about three days. More importantly, the infusion of resources dramatically lowered the cost of crossing from South to North America for everyone, including destitute people from other countries, which caused total migration from outside North America to reach an even higher level than before. The Venezuelans paved the way for many other nationalities to enter the Darien Gap.
Explanation 4: Perverse legal migration policies
Many immigrants in Mexico believed that President Biden would reopen asylum processing at legal crossing points with Mexico in 2021. Biden had said that “Remain in Mexico” would be phased out. Hence, immigrants in Mexico believed they would be allowed to enter legally as many were allowed to enter before the pandemic and “Remain in Mexico.” This meant they did not cross illegally as soon as Biden was inaugurated.
Instead, the inflection point occurred one month into his presidency when Customs and Border Protection announced that the only people who would be allowed to enter legally were those who had already crossed into the United States and were officially enrolled in the formal “Remain in Mexico” program known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)—not the people who had been waiting to enter legally or people returned under Title 42. On February 19, the Biden administration allowed the first group to enter, and that day, crowds of people showed up hoping to be let in legally.
“The news said they were going to reopen,” one Salvadoran mother who had waited for nearly two years with her family told the Wall Street Journal on February 19. But US officials made clear for the first time that no one new was getting in legally. “Physical presence at the U.S. border has not and will not be a means for gaining access to [lawful entry],” a DHS statement read. “The border remains closed.” This set off panic among those waiting in Mexico. “We can’t be here anymore,” one Honduran mother who was blocked from entering told the Los Angeles Times on February 19.
These scenes happened all across the border from California to Texas. The New York Times followed one family between ports of entry in Texas as they requested to enter legally. Then they asked Mexican authorities about being placed on a list to enter but were again turned away. One Honduran woman told the Washington Post that she thought every day about jumping into the Rio Grande River to cross and be with her children again, saying she did not care if she died. A Honduran father said, “I don’t want my children to be here in the cold, for people to treat them like trash, but we didn’t have a choice.” With no way to enter legally, most families ultimately gave up and crossed illegally.
Haitians and Cubans: The story is more dramatic for various groups that historically always entered legally—most notably, Haitians and Cubans. Cubans started this trend because they were released under the “wet foot, dry foot” policy. Haitians followed the same smuggling path from the Caribbean and were released under an Obama-era policy that prohibited deportations to Haiti after the 2010 Earthquake. President Obama eliminated “wet foot, dry foot” in January 2017, but most Cubans still sought to enter legally and, although forced to wait and subject to detention, nearly all continued to enter legally until Remain in Mexico effectively ended that option. During the pandemic, Title 42 ended any option but illegal entry.
The result of this closed borders policy was that when the migration surge started in 2021, Cubans and Haitians entered illegally rather than legally as they had in the past. The most infamous immigration moment during Biden’s presidency occurred in September 2021 when thousands of Haitians crossed illegally around a closed port of entry in Del Rio, Texas. After initially trying and failing to expel them all on flights to Haiti, CBP reversed course and started letting Haitians enter legally through ports of entry in the summer of 2021. This effectively ended Haitian illegal immigration.
Here’s another critical factor that was outside of Biden’s control: Nicaragua opened up visa-free travel with Cuba in November 2021. Very quickly, Cuban migration to the United States surged, as Cubans were freed to travel to the North American mainland for the first time in decades and seized the opportunity. Biden sanctioned Nicaraguan officials to no avail. But in January 2023, Biden announced that asylum seekers could use a cell phone app called CBP One to apply to enter legally.
Simultaneously, it created a humanitarian parole sponsorship program for legal entries directly from Cuba and three other countries, which granted Cubans two-year temporary statuses. These moves effectively eliminated illegal immigration by Cubans again—despite much larger flows than before.
Mexican families also traditionally always entered legally until the Trump administration banned them. Under Biden, the share of Mexican families entering legally has partially recovered but has fluctuated wildly based on how easy it was for them to access ports of entry. Overall, Biden has increased the share entering legally since he came into office but has not fully restored the pre-Trump procedures, leading many families to enter illegally.
Biden has also expanded legal options for other nationalities. In April 2022, Biden created a parole sponsorship process for Ukrainians. In October 2022, Biden created one for Venezuelans, and in January 2023 this program was expanded to Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. In combination with the CBP One interview appointment app, the overall share of immigrants who entered illegally began to fall in 2023 and plummeted down in 2024.
Biden’s partial reopening of legal migration has been successful. Still, the fact that he limited sponsorships to just four countries and established caps of 30,000 per month on parole sponsorship and 1,450 per day on CBP One appointments at the southwest ports of entry meant that illegal immigration has continued but at a lower level than otherwise.
Conclusion
The combination of fewer job openings and more legal opportunities to come has ended the border crisis. Immigration policy outside of the United States also mattered, but less so. For instance, Ecuador’s rescinding of its visa-free entry policy for the Chinese certainly contributed to the decline in Chinese migration. Mexico has managed to create serious bottlenecks for people crossing through its territory trying to reach the United States. But it is not possible to attribute most of the decline to Mexican enforcement as almost all of the increase in Mexican enforcement occurred before the decline in arrivals to the US border.
Some claim that the legal entry programs have only relabeled illegal crossings rather than substantively changed them. That is not true. Nearly all of the border crisis’s problems occurred because people crossed illegally. Legal entry allows people to plan their travel, employment, and housing. It opens the opportunity to work legally sooner and permits them to apply for permanent legal statuses—through asylum, family, or employer sponsorship. It allows for more careful and thorough vetting and frees Border Patrol agents to focus on stopping criminals. Legal entry prevents injuries during crossings that kill and maim people while causing problems for border hospitals. It prevents people from being involved in car chases and other encounters with law enforcement. Ultimately, it saves taxpayers’ money.
However, temporary parole statuses are discretionary and can be revoked by the next president. They do not provide a permanent fix to the problem. The best solution to address illegal immigration is through legal immigration pathways that provide individuals with the opportunity to stay indefinitely. Biden has made a few important reforms but has not ended illegal immigration.
The problem persists because he failed to act more boldly to create other legal pathways and because Congress has refused to reform the legal immigration system, keeping an archaic system crafted 100 years ago. America can do better. We can achieve both legality and order at the border. The Biden administration showed proof of concept. Now’s the time to finish the job.