How to Stop the Border Crisis | 5-Minute Videos

I've spent the last 20 years of my life dealing with the issue of immigration. First as a reporter in Texas, then as an intelligence officer in the Texas government, and now as a fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies. I've been all over Texas, Mexico, and Central America, and I've pretty much seen it all. But I've never seen anything like what I've seen since January 2021. No one has. According to U.S. government data, some 8 million people have illegally entered the United States from 2021 to 2024. These are the people we know about, but it's hardly the whole story. Another 2 million must be added to the total. These are the got-aways, the ones seen by border agents but never apprehended, and the ones who enter the country through a myriad of other ways. That brings us to a grand total of 10 million illegal crossers in three years, an average of 300,000 every month since Joe Biden was inaugurated president. That is the greatest mass movement across national borders in U.S. history, and maybe the greatest in human history, and they'll keep coming if we continue our current policies. That's not a guess, that's a guarantee. How can I say that? Because I know why they're coming. They've told me over and over and over again. It's not because they fear political persecution in their home country, it's not because they fear the drug cartels, and it's not because they fear their abusive husbands. Sure, some fraction of migrants fit those descriptions, but the overwhelming majority are coming for a much more obvious reason, to work and make money in the world's richest country. Simple as that. It's an economic calculation. Risk versus reward. If the reward of entering the U.S. is greater than the risk of deportation, migrants will come. And not just from Mexico or Central America, but from almost every country in the world. In the last three years, they've come from 150 different nations, including China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mauritania, Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela. They are drawn to the U.S. by what Spanish-speaking migrants call La Invitacion, an invitation to a banquet of generous government benefits and economic opportunities unavailable to them in their home countries. Illegal immigration has been a major issue in the U.S. for over 20 years. It's one of the reasons Donald Trump was elected in 2016. He promised to stop it, and he made significant progress. He extended the border wall, although his efforts were hampered by liberal judges and a Democratic Congress. He instituted a remain-in-Mexico policy, which forced migrants to wait for asylum claims to be decided while still in Mexico. He fully empowered border and immigration agents to detain, deport, and expel illegal immigrants back across the border. With the chances of getting into the United States diminished by these policies, migrants figured the trip wasn't worth the cost. The smuggling fees of $10,000 or more to cross the border, the time involved in traveling thousands of miles, much of it on foot, and the dangers of being robbed, raped, or killed along the way. But when the new Biden administration took over in 2021, the calculus changed. The trip was now worth the cost. Border agents became like Walmart greeters. Deportation officers were chained to their desks. Most anyone who showed up was guaranteed entry. Unaccompanied children under 17, parents with children, and pregnant women were able to skip the line. Documentation to prove any of these claims was either not required or minimal. The odds of entry spiked. It didn't take long for the word to get out. The border was open. Imagine this real-life scenario. A Guatemalan migrant is let right into the country. He sends a selfie. Everyone has a cell phone. Back to his family and friends in his village. Now imagine that scenario playing out thousands of times a day. What do you think the reaction is going to be? It's going to be like the California Gold Rush. A mass movement of people toward a single goal to get across the border. And once they achieve that goal, then what? Then they have to be housed, fed, and cared for. Their children, most of whom speak little or no English, have to be educated in our public schools. When they get sick, where do you think they go? If you've been to an emergency room lately, you know where. And then there's the crime. We know almost nothing about the people we're letting in. It's inevitable that some are bad actors. Given the millions entering, that's a lot of bad actors. Some Americans, like Georgia College student Lakin Riley, have already paid for this with their lives. And I haven't even mentioned the billions of dollars all this costs us, the American taxpayer. This is what we're dealing with now. The effects in 5, 10, or 20 years are unknown. Can we stop this historic flood? Yes, we can. All we have to do is reverse the risk-reward calculus. We did it from 2017 to 2021. The real question is, do we want to? That's up to you. I'm Todd Binsman, author of Overrun for Prager University. Thank you for watching this video. To keep PragerU videos free, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.