Bloomberg [unpaywalled]: “In this year’s US presidential campaign, few issues figure as prominently as immigration. Voters from coast to coast have seen their communities mired in fierce debates about how to handle an influx of migrants fueled by a record number of border crossings in 2023. Republican Donald Trump has long put cracking down on immigration at the center of his America First political agenda, using extreme or disproven examples to demonize migrants. Vice President Kamala Harris has had to respond to criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the issue, even as the inflow at the US-Mexico border has slowed in recent months. Often lost in all the politicking, though, is a clear accounting of what shape the recent wave of immigration has taken — and what clues that offers about the US economy, including the labor and resource needs of the swing-state cities and towns that are poised to have outsize impact on the election. Bloomberg News analyzed immigration court data obtained by researchers at Syracuse University that show where the 1.8 million asylum seekers and refugees who landed in the US in 2023 have taken up residence. In past decades, these records for immigration court cases would not have offered as comprehensive a picture of new arrivals. Now, though, more border-crossers are turning themselves in to apply for asylum and, eventually, a work permit, making the data set more exhaustive…”