NumbersUSA is an advocacy group started in 1996 which focuses solely on legal and illegal immigration, and seeks to influence the executive and legislative response to it. The organization boasts over 8 million members, with 6.5 million followers on its Facebook page alone. NumbersUSA aims to help the country craft an immigration system that best serves the national interest by lowering the current levels of legal immigration, and stopping the flow of illegal immigration into the country. 

Vice President of Content Chris Chmielenski spoke with me on Tuesday about how NumbersUSA started, and how they work to hold the federal government and elected officials accountable to these aims. 

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Just like on election integrity, Fox News and its debate moderators missed the opportunity to allow the GOP candidates to fully speak into the crisis at our Southern border. While there was a question about using troops to control the Southern border, there were no direct questions about how each candidate would transform the situation at the border; how a President Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, or Doug Burgum administration would do things differently than President Joe Biden, and what policies would each candidate put into place to stem the tide of illegal trafficking of drugs and humans that have been the end result of this influx. 

Clearly, the current policies of the Biden administration continue to fail, as migrant encounters continue to rise.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Friday announced that there were 183,503 migrant encounters at the southern border in July — lower than the same period last year but significantly higher than June’s lower numbers, which the Biden administration had touted as a sign that its policies were working.

There were 183,503 encounters along the southern border in July, which marks a decrease from the 200,162 encountered last July, but an increase from the 144,566 seen in June. 

It remains to be seen if Fox News was merely making a calculation or being shortsighted, but like the 2016 election, the 2024 election may well be defined by the candidate who has the strongest stance on stemming the tide of illegal border crossings, and putting in concrete policies on how our country best handles legal immigration. 

Chmielenski affirms that immigration will have a sizeable impact on the 2024 elections.

It's going to be a major issue for Republican voters. I think the big question is going to be how is it going to turn those more middle-class voters where immigration may not dominate their lives, but they're not happy with some of the clips that they're seeing on national television. Yes, while still more of the right-leaning news media have been the ones who have told the most stories about what's happening, not just along the border, but in states across the country, you have the New York Times, one of the nation's most elite newspapers, exposing some of the child labor issues that have occurred across this country, and you see more and more stories like that popping up all the time.

It's somewhat cliché, but every state is a border state when you have an administration that's simply resettling illegal border crossers in every state across the country. So, even if you're not a border state, even if you're in Nebraska, in all likelihood you have probably had people who have crossed the border illegally within the last 30 months make their way into your cities and towns. So, it's impacting everybody. 

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But it's not just illegal immigration or about ensuring the country has a steady stream of low-paid, unskilled labor to mow lawns and pick crops. The very legal (and very corrupted) H1-B Visa program has been a point of abuse and contention for decades, with tech companies manipulating the government for more foreign workers in order to undercut and underpay skilled Americans.

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The majority of the GOP candidates' answers to the one question asked about the Southern border were resounding calls for enforcement.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said, “I’m not going to send troops to Ukraine, but I am going to send them to our Southern border. The cartels are killing tens of thousands of our fellow citizens. We have to re-establish the rule of law and we have to defend our people."

Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy's rallying cry was, "Protect our own borders. Protect the homeland.”

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott weaved the need for border security and completing the wall into his closing statement. “As the next president of the United States, I will make that border wall complete,” he said.

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson was also head of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the George W. Bush administration and while encouraging greater law enforcement, also floated economic sanctions on Mexico. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence claimed the mantle of the "Trump-Pence administration" in instituting the Remain in Mexico policy, but had little new to say about any policies he would put in place as president. 

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was equally vague. “We need to stop any more from coming. We have to make sure that people who come here illegally are not rewarded,” he said.

Any way you slice it, it is up to the American people to watch how they vote, watch the legislation, and keep the pressure on. When I asked Chmielenski what the American voter can do to facilitate change in our immigration policies, his first response was, "Well, show up and vote in 2024." 

We don't know who the Republican nominee is, and Biden is the presumed Democrat nominee. But I mean, things change. He does have a primary challenger who's actually talking about the border issue, almost every single day. So, you never know what's going to happen on the Democratic side. But I think that's the most important thing, especially with some of these more down-ballot races, you know, look and see how your own state is dealing with this issue. 

NumbersUSA has a grade card on every immigration action taken by Congress, and Chmielenski encourages voters to look at what their local politicians are doing (or not doing) in this regard. 

We had a great piece of legislation, come through the House of Representatives, HR2, the "Secure the Border" Act. Look at how your members of Congress voted on that legislation. Look at some of the bills that they co-sponsored. Maybe a bit of an encouragement to visit our website and take a look at our immigration grade cards to see how your members of Congress have fared on the issue. And, you know, there's actually been a handful of Democrats, too, and it's starting to become a growing number of Democrats that have expressed concern over what's going on at the border. But what have they done? What legislation have they offered to try to solve the problem? I think those are the things the American voters need to think about if this is a big issue for them heading into the 2024 Elections.