03-08-2017, 01:26 PM
Quote:DONALD TRUMP launched his presidential campaign with a promise to build a wall along the United States-Mexico border in order to stem the tide of undocumented immigration. In fact, those flows were already in steep decline long before he introduced the proposal. The number of apprehensions of people attempting to cross illegally peaked in 2000, when America′s Border Patrol made more than 1.6m arrests, over 98% of which were of Mexicans. Over the course of George W. Bush′s administration, this number dropped to around 1m annually. During Barack Obama′s presidency, the rate fell even more precipitously, averaging just 400,000 a year. Moreover, in 2016, only 47% of the apprehensions involved Mexicans.Daily chart: How necessary is Donald Trump’s wall? | The Economist