In 2023, the number of vagrants (a.k.a. homeless people) in America hit a record of 653,000. Recent data indicate that this year, the number is expected to surpass that record.

This ignominious record comes despite near-historic-low unemployment numbers. Of course, it also comes in an economy where, thanks in large part to recent 40-year-high inflation, the cost of housing has also spiked to record highs.

However, the biggest factor in homelessness — and a big one in the very related rising cost of housing — is the Biden/Harris administration’s de facto open border policy. With some 10-20 million illegal aliens having entered the country since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, it comes as little surprise that many of these homeless people are migrants.

Take Massachusetts, for example, where roughly half of the more than 7,000 families in homeless shelters are migrants. Seven out of 10 homeless in Chicago are illegal aliens. Furthermore, the Windy City’s homeless population has ballooned to more than 18,800. In Denver, the homeless population has increased by 42% in the last couple of years, thanks almost entirely to an influx of illegal aliens. The state with the highest vagrancy rate is the one-party People’s Republic of California, where at least 180,000 people live on the streets or in shelters.

The trouble is that the actual number of vagrants is likely much higher than what has been reported. And what comes with a growth in homeless populations is an increase in crime.

Furthermore, taxpayers bear the financial burden of the care and sheltering for these illegals, in addition to the indirect economic impact on overwhelmed communities like Springfield, Ohio. For example, the cost of car insurance has risen significantly in some communities thanks largely to the poor driving abilities — and the predictable results — of uninsured migrants.

While Kamala Harris and her media cheerleading squad falsely claim she was never Joe Biden’s border czar, she does admit that she was tasked with tackling the so-called “root causes” of mass illegal immigration. Well, a genuine root cause, which the Biden/Harris administration and Democrats ignore, is the attractiveness of a massive welfare state and its “free” social services. It pays to be illegal.

If migrants received no such support, would they seek to enter the U.S. in such massive numbers? If they knew that they would be quickly deported upon being apprehended, would they still be making the trek across Mexico? In short, if these migrants weren’t being rewarded for breaking U.S. immigration law, then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be streaming across our border. That, in turn, would reduce crime, overcrowding, and vagrancy.

Of course, ending illegal immigration would be at odds with the Democrats’ strategy for growing their voter base. Instead, they will continue to rob the American taxpayer while claiming the moral high ground of caring for the welfare of migrants.