Did more non immigrants come to the USA during the Biden administration than during the last 70 years of Ellis Island

1. What the headline claim means and why it splits two different comparisons

The claim “more came during Biden than during Ellis Island” is ambiguous unless one specifies whether the comparison is cumulative arrivals across the whole Ellis Island era or a year-by-year pace; advocates citing CBO-derived averages highlight that net foreign migration averaged about 2.4 million annually in the early Biden years, a speed that outpaced the Ellis Island period’s peak annual growth and thus justifies statements about a faster pace ^{[3] [4]}; other commentators frame the claim as a cumulative equivalence — for example, many conservative opinion pieces argue Biden’s four-year influx nearly matched seven decades of Ellis Island entries — but that specific cumulative parity is not established in the reporting provided ^{[1] [5]}.

2. What the available data and reporting actually say

Multiple outlets summarize a CBO-based finding that net foreign migration averaged about 2.4 million per year between 2021 and 2023 (and similar figures through 2024 in some reporting), producing a Biden-era net migration likely to exceed roughly eight million people over four years ^{[3] [4] [2]}. By comparison, the iconic Ellis Island period recorded about 12 million arrivals between 1892 and 1954 (commonly quoted in commentary as roughly 12 million total or nearly 200,000 per year on average) — so the four-year Biden total cited in these reports does not surpass that entire Ellis Island cumulative figure ^[1].

3. Why some outlets declare Biden “beat” Ellis Island — and the agendas behind those takes

Headlines asserting Biden “outpaced” or “surpassed” Ellis Island rely on emphasizing the higher annual rate of arrivals during Biden’s term rather than the multi-decade cumulative total, and many pieces come from advocacy or opinion sources with clear anti- or pro-immigration policy stances (FAIR, conservative opinion columns, and similarly framed outlets) that seize the faster pace to support policy arguments about border management and political consequences ^{[3] [5] [6]}. Conversely, law firms, financial commentators, and some international outlets repeat the CBO average as a descriptive fact without equating four-year totals to the entire Ellis Island era, underscoring the need to parse “pace” versus “total” ^{[4] [2]}.

4. Limitations and caveats in the reporting

The assembled sources repeatedly cite a CBO-derived 2.4 million annual net migration figure but the underlying CBO report or raw datasets are not included in the provided snippets, so direct verification here is limited to secondary summaries ^{[3] [4]}. Historical comparisons across centuries are also fraught: Ellis Island entries were legal port arrivals recorded under different law and demography, while modern “net migration” figures fold in legal migration, asylum, and cross-border flows measured with contemporary statistical methods — apples-to-apples equivalence is therefore imperfect and contested in the cited reportage ^{[1] [7]}.

5. Bottom line

Based on the reporting provided, Biden-era net migration produced an unusually high annual influx (about 2.4 million per year) that many outlets correctly describe as a faster pace than Ellis Island’s peak years, but the four-year Biden total reported in these sources (roughly eight million) does not clearly exceed the roughly 12 million cumulative arrivals recorded for the Ellis Island period ^{[3] [4] [1]}. Readers should treat “surpassed Ellis Island” claims skeptically unless authors specify whether they mean annual pace or cumulative totals, and should consult the original CBO and historical immigration data for a definitive numeric reconciliation, which the provided sources summarize but do not reproduce ^{[3] [2]}.