“My staff will tell you, if it was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before, that was a relatively good number. If it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number and I was going to be in a bad mood all day.” So said former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson back in 2019, who added that 1,000 daily crossings “overwhelms the system” and is a “crisis.” It’s Johnson’s good fortune that he’s no longer DHS secretary, because he’d be blowing a gasket these days.

One would have to believe, based on the evidence, that the influx of illegal immigrants from all over the world has to be intentional, as if we had no border at all. Last Tuesday it was reported that there were more than 10,000 apprehensions at the border — this out of a total of more than 12,000 “migrant encounters,” which means about 2,000 got away. It’s become so bad at the out-of-the-way border crossing in Lukeville, Arizona, that authorities have had to close the local port of entry to accommodate a huge influx of young male “asylum seekers,” mainly from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

“I love you Joe Biden. Thank you for everything, Joe Biden!” exclaimed one African illegal who entered at Lukeville and will presumably be given a chance to go someplace in America to seek work or government assistance or both.

Unfortunately for him, the feeling isn’t mutual among those who have to use the port of entry. “It was a lose-lose,” said Congressman Juan Ciscomani, who represents that area. “There is zero upside to closing that Lukeville port. Trade has stopped. Tourism has stopped. Businesses on the U.S. side are seeing a 50 to 70% decrease in their sales.” The closure meant a three-hour detour to the next closest port of entry in Nogales, Arizona.

And then we have the increased crime and budgetary woes this invasion brings. “As indicated on the Department of Homeland Security websites, at least 2.6 million inadmissible aliens have been let loose into the United States since Biden took office,” writes Elaine Mallon at The Federalist. One culprit: the Biden administration’s CBP One mobile app, which has essentially become a “get out of jail free” card for illegal immigrants.

According to Fox News: “Lawmakers have also been told there is an average of 5,000 illegal immigrants released each day to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who provide migrants with assistance and will sometimes help them get to their destinations. If that pace holds throughout the entire year that would be over 1.8 million illegal entrants in that timeframe.”

That number doesn’t even count the estimated 670,000 “gotaways,” meaning there are close to 2.5 million illegal immigrants now entering the country each year — that we know of. In other words, every year we gain a new Chicago’s worth of low-skilled foreign workers with who-knows-what intentions and health problems.

Based on that information, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a report, based on the latest Current Population Survey from the Census Bureau, that makes a significant claim about the number of foreign-born people now in the U.S.

Focusing on the period after President Biden took office in January 2021 shows an increase of 4.5 million. The increase during Biden’s first 34 months is unprecedented. What is so striking about the recent run-up in the number of immigrants is that the increase represents a net change, not merely new inflow. The foreign-born population can only grow when immigrants arrive from abroad, but these new arrivals are always offset by emigration and mortality among the existing immigrant population. All births to immigrants in the United States, by definition, can add only to the native-born population. This means that significantly more than 4.5 million people had to have arrived from abroad for it to grow this much.

As it stands, CIS says the share of foreign-born people in the U.S. right now is the highest ever, beating out the peak immigration years between the War Between the States and World War I, when millions (including this writer’s ancestors) arrived here to start a new life as Americans. While much of the current wave is also looking to work and improve themselves, they don’t seem to want to assimilate and become non-hyphenated Americans as much as the ancestors of our native-born did.

But since Joe Biden has clearly encouraged this invasion from the beginning, and since a divided Congress can only fight over funding to address it, we’re consigned to watching this slow-motion train wreck for a little while longer — and becoming even more angry.