Sometimes, dry government reports can hide revealing facts deep inside them. Such is the case with the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) annual update regarding demographics.
The CBO report, issued late last month in preparation for the organization’s annual review of the budget and economic outlook, includes typical statistics and projections regarding fertility rates, mortality, life expectancy, and age swings among the American population. But it also shows how the chaos at our southern border under the Biden administration far exceeds all prior migrations, raising questions about the consequences should this bedlam persist.
Immigration Explosion
In its report, the budget office created both prospective and retrospective estimates for three different categories of migrants: legal permanent residents, or people who can become legal permanent residents (e.g., fiancées of citizens, refugees, and asylees); people admitted as non-immigrants, such as students and temporary workers; and other foreign nationals. The last category includes individuals who have entered the country (either at a port of entry or otherwise) illegally, individuals paroled into the United States, and individuals who have overstayed their visas.
As this chart on page six of the report demonstrates, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to recognize that the explosion in the “other foreign national” category under the Biden administration vastly exceeds all other types of immigration combined over the past two decades:
Elsewhere in the report, CBO notes that it now expects 5 million more migrants to arrive in this country over the next three years (2024 to 2026)
