The head of the Federal Reserve disclosed that the millions of illegal immigrants released into the United States from the southern border during the Biden administration have had a positive impact on the U.S. economy.
Jerome Powell, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, said Tuesday that the labor market was “very, very strong,” partially due to the “millions” of migrants who have joined the workforce since 2021 amid the border crisis.
“I would also point to a fairly large influx of immigration into the country over the past couple of years,” Powell said during a discussion at the Foreign Bankers’ Association annual meeting in Amsterdam. “Those people are joining the labor force. We’re experiencing still a labor shortage in many industries, and so there are jobs, and they’re going to work, and they’re consuming, so that’s also boosting, boosting growth.”
Powell’s admission comes after he revealed last month that this year’s job forecast was expected to be strong again following last year’s gains.
“We’re still getting, you know, very substantial numbers of people coming to the country and going to work,” Powell said on Tuesday.
“I’m just giving you the straight economics of it. People come in, they can get a work permit, they are getting work permits, and they go to work, and they’re paying taxes, and they’re creating economic output. And there are millions of them,” Powell continued. “And it’s alleviating the labor shortage that we had in, in the industries that really had it the worst.”
More than 6 million migrants have illegally crossed the southern border since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Biden administration has not publicly disclosed how many migrants were released into the country rather than removed. Unlawful entry is a federal crime.
Migrants are released into the country due to the government’s inability to detain as many people as are being apprehended. People who are let into the country may remain through court proceedings, which take several years.
People who claim asylum may obtain a document that allows them to work legally while they remain in the U.S. but will not receive that document for six months after seeking asylum, leaving many in limbo for months.
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The latest analysis of federal asylum data revealed that 1.3 million people have sought asylum and are awaiting a decision, meaning they would have the ability to work in the country legally, according to nonpartisan research group the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University in New York.
Migrants from select countries — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — who apply from outside the U.S. to enter under a Biden-era parole initiative are also given a two-year work permit once they arrive in the country. More than 400,000 migrants from those four countries have obtained work documents through the program since it was rolled out in January 2023.
