From my new Taki’s Magazine column:

… For example, weren’t we assured during the depths of the recession that illegal immigration would never happen again? Isn’t there supposed be “zero net immigration” from Mexico?

But how could our leadership have known there were more Third Worlders out there somewhere beyond Mexico?

Nine years ago, I counted up how many people lived in countries where the average per capita GDP was below Mexico’s. I titled the resulting essay “The Five Billion.”

Among them are the 43 million people left in Central America. To put that in perspective, that’s as large as the population of Mexico was in 1962. And there are now about 35 million Mexicans in the U.S. …

From 2009-2001, Gallup asked 452,199 adults in 151 countries if they’d like to immigrate somewhere:

About 13% of the world’s adults—or more than 640 million people —say they would like to leave their country permanently. Roughly 150 million of them say they would like to move to the U.S.

Notice that’s just counting adults, not dependent children.

Gallup found the urge to move to the U.S. high among Central Americans: 14 percent of Guatemalans would like to come here, as well as 15 percent of Nicaraguans, 18 percent of Hondurans, and 19 percent of Salvadorans.