Alex Nowrasteh
February 1st, 2024
The US Border Patrol had over 6.3 million encounters with illegal immigrant border crossers from the beginning of the Biden administration in January 2021 to December 2023.
October 5th, 2023
The recent Supreme Court case about affirmative action in university admissions (SFFA v. Harvard) paralleled a broader social debate over meritocracy.
March 30th, 2023
From December 2022 to February 2023, encounters of migrants crossing the southwest (SW) border with Mexico are down 39 percent. President Biden’s immigration and border plan that expanded legal migration to the United States...
February 23rd, 2023
The total number of encounters along the southwest (SW) border with Mexico dropped by 37.9 percent in the month following President Biden’s new immigration and border plan. President Biden framed his plan as an immigration...
January 19th, 2023
The immigration system of the United States favors family reunification even in the so‐called employment‐based (EB) green card categories. Under current interpretations of U.S. immigration law, family members of immigrant...
September 29th, 2022
PragerU recently released a video by podcaster and influencer Will Witt titled “Who Cares about Illegal Immigration?” PragerU has released
July 28th, 2022
The flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border has markedly risen over the last several years. In FY2021, Border Patrol had 1,662,167 encounters with illegal immigrants and other border crossers. So far in FY2022...
April 6th, 2022
Based on data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we find that immigrants consume 28 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native‐born Americans on a per capita basis.
January 20th, 2022
The Biden administration needs to rapidly reverse this situation, recover the lost visas through legislation, and go even further or the U.S. economy will suffer long run drags on its growth.
September 2nd, 2021
A dearth of workers is slowing our recovery from the economic devastation wrought by COVID-19. Overly large unemployment insurance checks, an expanded welfare state and immigration restrictions have reduced the supply of...
January 4th, 2024
The flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border has markedly increased over the last several years. In FY2021, Border Patrol had 1,659,206 encounters with illegal immigrants and other border crossers along the...
August 22nd, 2023
The Cato Institute is launching a new online game called the Green Card Game. Americans will—for the first time—see firsthand what it’s like to try to get a green card, or permanent residence, in the United States
March 23rd, 2023
Government spending in the United States is enormous. Federal and state governments spent over $9 trillion in 2022 on the welfare state, defense, health care, education, and other areas. Taxes and borrowing fund that...
February 2nd, 2023
Total government spending on the welfare state amounted to about $2.6 trillion in 2020. In that year, the federal government spent roughly $2.4 trillion on welfare and entitlement programs, an amount equal to approximately...
November 23rd, 2022
The U.S. immigration system is too restrictive and bureaucratic. The result is chaos along the U.S.-Mexico border, wait times for legal visas that sometimes extend for decades, and a reduction in economic and cultural...
August 18th, 2022
The immigration system of the United States is more restrictive than most other developed countries. As my colleague David Bier has shown, the foreign‐born U.S.
May 5th, 2022
A recent Tucker Carlson segment argued that the increase of illegal immigrants coming across the border in recent years caused the rise in homicides in Houston, Texas. Using crime data given to me by the Texas Department of...
February 17th, 2022
The rise of ultra‐progressive ideologies and the decline in patriotic sentiment are two broad cultural trends that worry American conservatives.
December 28th, 2021
In historical perspective, the percent of criminal individuals apprehended by Border Patrol is low at about 1 percent in 2021.
May 14th, 2021
Texas is the only state that keeps the records of the immigration statuses of those arrested and convicted of state‐level crimes, thus giving the public its best opportunity to study the crime rates of illegal immigrants...