[lxgr]

I'm willing to believe that that number is (much) larger than granted green cards or visas – but are there any reliable estimates? Otherwise it's just a baseless claim.

One number I've found puts the estimated number of unlawful entries to the US per year at under 100k, for a total population of around 10 million. The EU sees around 2.5 million immigrants, vs. around 1.5 million emigrants, per year.

GPs claim of "millions of dirt-poor immigrants per year" skewing the numbers doesn't seem realistic to me.

[ren_engineer]

Border patrol has averaged around 200K apprehensions per month for 2 years now at the southern border, that doesn't even account for the people they didn't apprehend. Not sure where you got the 100K annual number but it isn't even close to accurate

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-border-crossings-us...

[arcticbull]

Well the question is what is the number who make it through? The number captured isn't relevant. If they captured 100% then the undocumented immigration number would be 0. Then we also need to know how many self-deport back over the border.

[bandrami]

It's estimated to be net negative (more people leave illegally than enter illegally). It peaked late in George W Bush's 2nd term and has been falling steadily ever since, crossing the zero point some time during Obama's admin.

It's an entirely made-up "crisis", but a reliably effective one politically.

[arcticbull]

Not to mention Obama deported almost 1% of the entire American population (some 2.5M between 2009 and 2015) - more than any other president either in actual numbers or as a percentage of the population.