Trendspotting: Surge at the Border: Biden's First Challenge?

NewsWire: 4/15/21

• The number of working-age Mexicans apprehended at the border has more than doubled in recent months. The increase coincides with a surge in unaccompanied children and family migrants, presenting a major quandary for the Biden administration. (Bloomberg)
• NH: Since the beginning of 2020, the number of illegal border crossings has skyrocketed. In March, authorities apprehended 172K migrants, a +66% YoY increase. This marks the largest number of border arrests in a single month since March 2001.

• A large portion of these migrants are children, many of them from Central America's troubled "northern triangle" (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). Last month, officials took 18,890 unaccompanied minors into custody. Many families send their kids across the border because US law makes it harder to deport children than adults. This rise in unaccompanied minors started in the Obama years and has continued at a staccato pace ever since.
• But while kids and families receive most of the news coverage, a new trend has emerged since the pandemic: more border crossings by single Mexican adults. Last month, authorities reported 57,547 "encounters" with this demographic. That’s a +97% YoY increase. 

• Let's back up and take a longer-term perspective on what's going on. The US experienced substantial positive net immigration of illegals from Mexico pretty much every year during the 1990s and through the early 2000s. Then, during and after the GFC, the net inflow stopped. Ever since 2007, in fact, the US has experienced a net negative immigration of illegals--that is, more are flowing out than flowing in. We have covered this trend often over the years. (See our first piece in 2014, "The Changing Politics--and Reality--of US Immigration.") Pew uses residuals from Census data to plot the estimated total undocumented population in the US by country of origin. Pew's most recent numbers extend through 2017.

• Note that the total undocumented population has been declining since 2007, almost surely indicating a net outflow. Note also that the decline is especially steep for Mexicans, which helps explains why the Asian foreign-born population is now rising even while the Mexican foreign-born population is now declining. (See "Profile of US Immigrants Has Changed.")
• Why this reversal in Mexican immigration? The long-term cause, IMO, is the rapid drop in Mexican fertility rates back in the early 1980s. This drop suddenly shrank the size of cohorts reaching their 20s by the mid-2000s--close to the modal age for immigrants looking for employment. Mexican families were under less pressure to find jobs for their kids.
• There were also shorter-term drivers. In the decade after the GFC, the Mexican economy performed fairly well, expanding as fast or faster than the US economy. For several years, US openings for unskilled labor (for example, in the construction industry) almost entirely disappeared. The poverty rate for US Hispanics soared. Differential job demand persuaded many Mexicans living in the US to return home. What's more, President Barack Obama turned out to be a resolute enforcer of immigration laws. (No US president has deported as many border-crossers as during his term of office.) While undocumented Mexicans could return home, they experienced a lot more difficulty going back north again.
• During the Trump presidency, as US unemployment rates dropped and US labor markets tightened, America began to reacquire its economic allure. By the spring of 2019, border arrests were reaching their highest monthly totals since before the GFC. Then came the pandemic, which enabled Trump to take extraordinary measures, including an executive order expelling border crossers without due process ("Title 42," granted under the aegis of a public health emergency law). This effectively kept the border closed during most of the last ten months of his presidency.
• More recently, in February and (especially) March, the number of border crossers has soared.
• Once again, explanations are not hard to find. On the economic front, the US economy is rapidly accelerating--creating hundreds of thousands of new service jobs each month and putting stimulus cash into the hands of US relatives of many newcomers. Meanwhile, the Mexican economy, even harder-hit than the US by Covid-19, is taking much longer to pick up speed. While US GDP fell by -3.5% YoY in 2020, Mexican GDP fell by -8.5% (the sharpest contraction since 1932). Despite his populist reputation, AMLO perversely refuses to approve much fiscal stimulus. The economic differential now tilts steeply in the US direction. 
• Meanwhile, of course, a new president (and party) in the White House changes America's brand in the eyes of most immigrants, from "not welcome" to "welcome." Thousands of families, single adults, and unaccompanied children who have put off coming across while Trump was in office are now giving it a shot now that Biden is in charge.
• No, neither Biden nor any other Democratic contender for the presidency ever supported "open borders"--nor could such a policy be attempted without getting Congress to enact new laws. But it's probably fair to say that--after years of invective hurled by progressives at every effort made by Trump to enforce the laws--that many expected any Democratic president to ease enforcement in any way possible. Even in the absence of net new inflows induced by America's hotter economy, the pandemic plus Trump's tough reputation probably put the normal back-and-forth border traffic on hold for most of last year. Many stuck on the Mexico side are eager to rejoin family and friends on the US side.
• Biden finds himself in a difficult position. 
• On the one hand, media stories about a cross-border "invasion" into the Southwest threaten to make his administration appear both incompetent and hypocritical. Here is the new Democrat, barely in office, and already he is stumbling in his efforts to control the US border--after his party had complained so loudly about how badly a Republican had been trying to do it. Politically, this is not a good look for Joe. Many Republicans would be happy to use this issue to try to take back Congress in 2022.
• On the other hand, the new president is being savaged by progressives precisely for trying his best to stop the inflow. Some complain of his failure to show "basic humanity" to the new arrivals. Others charge he is setting up a harsh "constitution-free zone" at the border. Dozens of House Democrats who want Biden to repeal Title 42 are challenging the White House to explain why it is still employing a Trump-signed directive that every Democrat found so hateful just a few months ago.
• All this is awkward. And it may soon get more awkward. The White House is currently planning to nominate Chris Magnus, a progressive Arizona police chief, to head Customs and Border Protection within DHS. Securing the nomination would please his party's progressive wing. But it could also require a hard fight and a close vote in the Senate. Even if the nomination goes through, it risks demoralizing the embattled US Border Patrol, the agency's massive uniformed enforcement arm. That certainly won't help Biden.
• But it might help Senator Mitch McConnell and company. At a time when the economy and markets are flashing green, nothing would please the Republicans more than a months-long debate, covered by every news outlet, over the president's success or lack thereof at the border.

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