Did more immigrants come in during Biden than the 62 years Ellis island was in operation
Executive summary
The short answer: based on available reporting, more people did not arrive during the Biden administration than passed through Ellis Island during its 62 years of operation; the commonly cited modern estimate of roughly 8 million net migrants during Biden’s term is below the roughly 12 million arrivals processed at Ellis Island from 1892–1954 [1] [2]. That conclusion requires an important caveat: the comparability of the two figures is imperfect because Ellis Island counts arrivals processed while modern statistics cited for the Biden years are typically net migration (arrivals minus departures) and combine legal and unauthorized movement [3] [1] [4].
1. The modern tally most often cited: about 8 million net migrants under Biden
Multiple reports relying on CBO, Goldman Sachs and other analyses place average annual net foreign migration at about 2.4 million people between 2021 and 2023 and project total net migration during Biden’s presidency to exceed roughly 8 million people through 2024 [5] [1] [6], a figure repeated in mainstream and international outlets reporting government-derived net-migration estimates [1].
2. Ellis Island’s long-run total: roughly a dozen million arrivals
The National Park Service and multiple historical summaries note that Ellis Island was the main federal immigration station from 1892 to 1954 and that it processed more than 12 million immigrants during those decades, a figure routinely cited in museum and historical materials about the island’s role as the principal entry point for European arrivals [3] [2].
3. Apples-to-oranges: why raw comparisons can mislead
Historians and fact-checkers warn that Ellis Island’s statistic is a count of arrivals processed at a port of entry, whereas modern “net migration” numbers subtract emigrants and reflect the balance of inflows and outflows; contemporary “encounters” at the border or Border Patrol releases are yet a different operational metric and can be conflated with successful settlement [4] [1] [7]. Because sources cited for the Biden-era surge mix net migration, encounters, legal admissions, and estimates of unauthorized entries, directly equating an Ellis Island arrivals total to a modern net-migration tally without adjusting for definitions risks error [4] [7].
4. Competing narratives and partisan framing
Conservative policy groups and Republican officials have emphasized that the Biden years saw an unprecedented pace of arrivals and in some messaging claim the administration “invited in” numbers comparable to or exceeding Ellis Island totals; FAIR, House Republican communications, and partisan commentaries highlight a 2.4 million annual pace and warn of more than 8 million new migrants, sometimes adding that a large share was unauthorized [5] [8]. Opposing analysts and neutral demographers stress the need to distinguish legal migration, asylum processing, re-entries and repeat encounters — and caution that political messaging has inflated some counts or converted border encounters into claims of permanent settlement without consistent methodology [4] [7] [9].
5. Bottom line, with limits of reporting made explicit
Given the available reporting, the best-supported numeric claim is that net migration during the Biden administration is likely to total on the order of eight million people — substantial, historically large, and in some annual-rate comparisons unprecedented — but still numerically less than the roughly 12 million immigrants processed at Ellis Island over its 62 years; however, this conclusion rests on non-identical metrics and contested partisan interpretations in the sources, so any definitive “more or fewer” statement must acknowledge those measurement differences [1] [2] [4]. Sources used here do not provide a single harmonized dataset that reconciles arrivals-vs-net-migration or segregates legal and unauthorized totals across the two eras, and that limitation constrains certainty [4] [1].