David J. Bier
David J. Bier
This is Part 4 of the origins of the border crisis. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
What Caused the Crisis
Four factors primarily caused the border crisis:
the unprecedented difference in labor demand between the US and the developing world;
the unparalleled access to information about how to travel illegally to the US;
enforcement policies—namely Title 42—that created perverse incentives to repeatedly cross illegally; and
perverse legal migration policies that caused people to cross illegally rather than legally.
Explanation 1: Labor demand
The number of job openings reached nearly two per unemployed person in the United States. In absolute terms, there were twelve million open jobs in 2022. Both numbers were the highest recorded by the government since the job openings survey began in 2001. There were more open jobs each month from February 2021 to August 2024 than in any month before February 2021. As I’ve pointed out, the relationship is much more pronounced for migration from Central America than from Mexico in large part because so many Mexicans can cross legally.
The rise and fall of the high labor demand economy tracks the rise and eventual fall in Border Patrol arrests. US jobs fund migration, even by asylum seekers, because immigrants can borrow against their future earnings to pay for smuggling fees and other costs. But more than the unprecedented increase in jobs inside the United States, the relative difference between immigrants’ home countries and the United States mattered more. While other countries lagged, the US labor market took off in 2021. As one Mexican border crosser told the Wall Street Journal in 2021, “The economy is going to [react] very quickly in the United States. They are already reopening.”
Explanation 2: Access to migration information
The second critical component of the Biden border crisis was how quickly information on how to migrate illegally was communicated. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-part-4-what-caused-border-crisis