By Tyler Musialowski
North Carolina Sen. Dan Bishop, the Republican candidate for the 9th Congressional District, recently conducted an interview on Tariq Scott Bokhari and Larken Egleston’s “R&D in the QC” podcast that, in part, discussed illegal immigration.
When asked about what issue Bishop would like to impact should he win, he answered “illegal immigration on the Southern border.”
Bishop highlighted the ongoing border crisis and emphasized how President Trump declared the situation an emergency.
“Establishing border security has been an elusive task to the point that we now have, depending on your estimate, between 11 and 22 million illegal immigrants in the United States,” Bishop said.
So how do we verify the size of a group that is inherently undocumented? Is Bishop’s estimation too high or too low?
Let’s break it down.
The Pew Research Center’s latest data says, “There were 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2017.” Pew data also indicates that the unauthorized immigrant population has generally decreased over the last decade.
The methodology behind Pew’s collection of this data can be found here.
In December 2018, the Department of Homeland Security released its own estimate of the “Illegal alien population residing in the United States.” It estimates that as of January 2015, “12.0 million illegal aliens were living in the United States.”
DHS methodology is attached within the report.
Researchers from Yale University conducted their own investigation on the current size of the unauthorized immigrant population and concluded that there are “22.1 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.”
Results of the study were released in September 2018.
“Even using parameters intentionally aimed at producing an extremely conservative estimate, they found a population of 16.7 million undocumented immigrants,” a Yale School of Management article says.
These figures are significantly larger than those that have been reported by federal outlets, such as DHS or the Census Bureau. But which measure Bishop was referring to in the interview was unclear.
Depending on which outlet figures are retrieved from, the unauthorized immigration population in the United States can range from 11 million to 22 million people, as Bishop said.
But most data, including that from the federal government, points toward the actual population falling closer to the lower end of Bishop’s stated range.
As to solving the issue of undocumented immigration, Bishop said in the interview that he wants to see common sense solutions in Washington, not just for immigration, but for a whole host of divisive issues facing Congress.
“Border security must be established now – not in a couple of years, not as part of some long-term, grand agreement,” he said.
He said that he believed the construction of a physical barrier on the Southern border is “exactly right.”
Bishop also emphasized how he wants immigration reform to focus on stopping the flow of immigration outside of the United States to stop the surge of migrants, rather than relying on “the internal catch-and-release system where you have overburdened, and manipulation – sort of a sabotage of the asylum system. That’s what must be done.”
