Yes, there is so a border crisis

[Sancho]

22. Sorry, but the current border is not really an issue - a path to citizenship is the issue.

...I lived in El Paso in the late 50s, and I've been teaching in Florida for more than 30 years. There are times where the immigrants are more or less, but the basics have hardly changed in decades. There is no realistic way to prevent immigration, but there could be ways to have a reasonable process for documentation.

Here, about a quarter to a third of my students were born outside the US. About 15% of the houses in my middle class neighborhood are owned by familes from out of the US. My colleagues are from Poland, Germany, Turkey, China, Korea, Jamaica, Brazil, Peru, and Cuba. Schools and universities hire faculty from overseas because there is a teacher shortage. One of the easiest ways to enter the US is to come on a student visa, get a job in the US, and stay here.

About half the people who work for contractors here are "undocumented" (maybe more).
Some come over the border with Mexico, but most arrive with visas or by boat from the Caribbean.

No one will ever get a handle on this until there is a reasonable way for people to become legitimate. Who knows how many millions are in the US now? This is a typical story:

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2023/08/14/forced-to-fire-undocumented-workers-owner-of-landmark-florida-restaurant-seeks-change/

Most immigrants work and want to become citizens. Spending years and thousands of dollars to become a citizen is crazy. People are deported, and many simply return. They leave their children who were born here, and come back as quickly as possible. This is dated, but it is accurate:

The border is a shiny object: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/683662691/where-does-illegal-immigration-mostly-occur-heres-what-the-data-tell-us

Most undocumented immigrants didn't enter this country through Tijuana, where news cameras have captured images of thousands of immigrants seeking refuge during recent months.

And they didn't enter near the border town of McAllen, Texas, which the president visited Thursday during the 20th day of a partial government shutdown fought over constructing additional barriers on the Southern border.

When it comes to people in the country without proper documentation, the majority of them didn't cross the Mexican border at all. Most of them came to the United States legally — but then don't leave.

About 700,000 travelers to the United States overstayed their visas in fiscal 2017, the most recent year for which the Department of Homeland Security has published figures. DHS estimated that, as of Sept. 30, 2017, the end of that fiscal year, more than 600,000 of those travelers were still in the U.S.