What happened to the border crisis? Through out most of 2021, we heard constant reports about the surging numbers of migrant workers crossing the US southern border illegally. Then somewhere around October of 2021, the crisis seemed to disappear from the news.
So what happened? Was the crisis resolved? Did illegal border crossings drop off? No, it got worse and the main stream news outlets just stopped talking about it. And we are now on track for an even greater crisis this year than last year.
In FY 2020, because of COVID-19, border crossings were unusually low (456k), so it makes little sense use FY 2020 for comparison with FY 2021. For this reason, we’ll compare 2021 with 2019 (despite the fact that 2020 was remarkably similar to 2018).
When Biden became President of the United States, the number of illegal border crossings nearly doubled over the 2019 numbers with more than 1.73 million border encounters for the fiscal year (Oct 1, 2020 to Sep 30, 2021) compared to 977,509 border encounters for FY 2019. Of course, if you were to look at the 2021 calendar year there were over 2 million border encounters.
And it’s shaping up to be far worse for FY 2022!
- In Oct 2021 (FY 2022) there were 164k border encounters, compared to 60.7k in Oct (FY)2019.
- In Nov 2021 (FY 2022) there were over 174k border encounters, compared to 62.4k in Nov (FY) 2019.
- In Dec 2021 (FY 2022) there were 178.8k border encounters, compared to Dec (FY)2019 there were 60.7k border encounters.
- In Jan (FY 2022) there were 153.9k border encounters, compared to 78.4k border encounters in Jan (FY2019 (nearly double the previous year).
- And in Feb (FY 2022) there were 164.9K border encounters, compared to 76.5K in Feb (FY) 2019.
If you wanted to compare calendar year 2021 with 2022 so far, there have been 153.9k in Jan this year vs 78.4k in Jan last year, 164.9K border encounters in Feb of this year vs 101k last year, and March is on track to break new records!
It would appear VP Harris’s strategy of traveling to South and Central America and telling the people , “Don’t come” didn’t work. And with more than 164.9 encounters on our southern border (up from 101k in Feb 2021, and 76.5k in Feb 2019) we are well on track to destroy all previous records for illegal immigration across our southern border in 2022.
Just FYI, about FY…
Just in case you find the difference between a fiscal year (FY) and a calendar year confusing, let me assure you you’re not alone. I’d like to offer the following explanation.
A fiscal year is a “financial” year, for budgeting purposes. The US federal government’s fiscal year starts on Oct 1st, and ends on Sep 30 the following year. The 2022 FY for our government actually started Oct 1, 2021. So while the calendar year 2022 may have started Jan 1, 2022, the FY for the fed actually started 3 months earlier.
This means Nov 2021 would actually be Nov (FY) 2022 for our government. Any figures for a FY (like 2021) would include figures from Oct-Dec of the previous calendar year (2020).
I hope that helped.