Not Your Grandfather’s Illegal Immigration

“It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state,” Milton Friedman said. Unfortunately, plenty of American politicians have spent the intervening decades unwittingly proving him right.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, we certainly had a welfare state, but illegal immigration consisted mostly of Mexican nationals crossing the border to do seasonal work and returning home in the off-season. Few asked for asylum and most were uninterested in taking up permanent residence, limiting their fiscal and social impact on the United States. Importantly, Mexico was then not effectively run by drug cartels.

Today, illegal immigration is different. DHS has observed a “steep increase in Southwest Border encounters of extra-regional nationals.” That is, many illegal immigrants come from places other than Mexico and northern Central America. From 2013 to 2018, they averaged 28,000 encounters a year, just 6 percent of the total. By 2022, they numbered 1 million, or 43 percent. In 2000, Mexican nationals accounted for 98 percent of apprehensions at the southwest border, but by 2024, they accounted for only 30.6 percent of encounters.

People who undertake a weeks- or months-long journey to the U.S. border are not going to be in a hurry to turn around and go back, especially given the danger and expense the trek entails. Violence and human trafficking are a constant threat to more vulnerable migrants, who are prime targets for gangs. Smuggling fees are high and very profitable. The Treasury Department reported last year that one smuggling ring charged $13,000 to $16,000 per migrant, and federal prosecutors in El Paso recently described fees of up to $30,000 to use a cross-border tunnel.

Built into those fees are the “taxes” cartels charge for crossing their territories. Those taxes bring in upwards of hundreds of millions per year and help underwrite their illegal drug trade, human trafficking, violence, and corruption operations. But the cartels may be cutting out the middleman. A March 2026 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment from the Treasury Department said cartels are expanding into human smuggling: “Cartels have increasingly diversified into human smuggling as part of their illicit money-making operations.” Drug smuggling and human smuggling require the same infrastructure and similar arrangements with local officials, and migrants can be made into “mules.” The Functional Government Initiative’s Secure Border Initiative is working to document that convergence, along with other early warning signs of cartel violence and terrorism.

Upon reaching the border, migrants are far more likely to ask for asylum than in decades past. Department of Justice data show that new asylum filings in immigration court rose nearly 1,170 percent between 2016 and 2024, and the number of asylum cases awaiting a decision rose 514 percent. Over the same period immigration court backlogs grew 374.9 percent.

Those backlogs and procedures cost money. During the open-border Biden years, while the cartels got wealthier adding human smuggling to their portfolios, the bills were mounting for U.S. taxpayers. In 2024, Federation for American Immigration Reform executive director Julie Kirchner told Congress, “Our estimate, which is a conservative one, is that Americans now pay $150.7 billion dollars annually due to illegal immigration.” That was net. She estimated gross expenditures due to illegal immigration were $182 billion a year. Milton Friedman saw this coming. All that money, largely from taxpayer dollars, built and still supports a massive industry of NGOs that shelter, transport, represent, and advocate for new arrivals, including illegal immigrants.

And lower-income Americans bear other costs from open borders. Pew Research Center said the number of illegals in the workforce rose from 5.6 million in 2000 to 9.7 million in 2023. Many of those are part-time and entry-level jobs American workers could otherwise fill, and the significant presence of illegals in those positions helps keep wages depressed in their industries.

None of this has to be. The Trump administration has stopped the flood across the southwest border, but lasting solutions require Congress to act to secure the progress permanently. Importantly, our government needs to look at the world as it is. We have a welfare state, and we have seen the impact of free immigration. It is time to act accordingly.