$7 Billion Spent. No Plan. No Progress. It Didn’t Have to Be This Way.

This is what immigration could look like in America — secure, humane, and built on the values that made us great. A new Ellis Island for a new era.

America’s greatness has always rested on a simple but radical idea: that our country is not defined by bloodline, but by belief. We are the descendants of immigrants, the inheritors of hope, the stewards of opportunity. Yet today, that legacy is being strained and even fractured — not because we are failing in compassion, but because we are failing in planning, leadership, and vision.

Across the nation, billions of dollars have been spent not to solve the immigration crisis, but simply to survive it.

New York City, one of the proudest sanctuary cities in America, has already spent $6.9 billion responding to its migrant crisis. Denver has spent $356 million to shelter and assist just 45,000 migrants since 2022. Chicago estimates migrant-related spending nearing $166 million. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and dozens of other cities have diverted federal and local resources to house, feed, and transport new arrivals — a situation no city, no matter how compassionate, was ever built to manage alone.

This flood of emergency spending has not brought order. It has not brought relief. It has not solved the problem.

It has only prolonged the suffering, for migrants and citizens alike.

The truth is that we had, and still have, the resources to solve this. We simply lacked the will and imagination to act before the crisis reached our doorstep.

Instead of billions spent reacting, we could have spent billions preventing.

Instead of emergency shelters and overburdened hotels, we could have built a new system — one grounded in the best parts of our past, but elevated by the possibilities of the present.

The New Ellis Island: A National Commitment to Compassion, Order, and Opportunity

If even half the money already spent by cities like New York had been invested proactively, America could have built three major immigration processing campuses: one in New York City, one in Los Angeles, and a flagship center along the Texas-Mexico border.

Each center would operate not like a detention center, but like a vibrant processing and integration campus — a modern Ellis Island. These centers would offer secure, humane, and dignified entry points into American society.

The flagship campus along the Texas border would be designed to handle up to 100,000 migrants at a time. With modern modular construction, temporary housing could be built at an average cost of $30,000 per unit. Assuming family units are grouped and individuals placed efficiently, a $1 billion investment could provide over 30,000 private housing units, each with basic amenities, healthcare access, schooling for children, and orientation programs.

Operating costs for this scale would include food, utilities, security, legal services, and case management. Based on current industry standards for refugee camps and humanitarian centers, the daily cost per migrant could range from $100 to $150. Therefore, $500 million would cover up to 5 million nights of housing, or sustain 30,000 individuals for over five months while their cases are processed.

Restoring Speed and Fairness to the System

Today, asylum claims in America can take four years or longer to adjudicate. This backlog is not inevitable. It is the product of chronic underfunding.

Currently, America employs about 600 immigration judges for a backlog of over 2 million pending cases. That is absurd. By comparison, even moderately busy state court systems employ thousands of judges to handle civil disputes, traffic cases, and criminal trials.

If we had invested $200 million a year — a tiny fraction of what New York City alone has spent — we could have hired and trained 1,000 additional immigration judges. Each judge could process 750 cases per year (a reasonable average). That would allow America to clear 750,000 cases annually, cutting backlog times from four years to six months or less.

Instead of families wandering the streets of major cities, desperate for aid and vulnerable to exploitation, they would know quickly and clearly whether they had legal status, a work permit, or a pathway to citizenship.

Those who did not qualify would be treated respectfully, but firmly returned to their country of origin, not left in legal limbo or underground economies.

A Moral, Economic, and Security Imperative

Some would argue that such a system would cost too much. But doing nothing costs far more.

The billions spent by sanctuary cities are just the beginning. Emergency hotel contracts in New York City have cost taxpayers upwards of $400 per night per room — more than the cost of housing tourists at four-star hotels. Entire budgets for city education, healthcare, and housing programs are being cannibalized to pay for migrant services. Meanwhile, public trust in government declines, social tensions rise, and the migrants themselves are left adrift, waiting for a bureaucracy that may take half a decade to answer them.

It is a betrayal of everyone’s hopes: the migrant’s dream of freedom, and the citizen’s expectation of order.

There is another cost as well: the erosion of American security.

In a chaotic system where people flood across the border without processing, without documentation, without clear pathways, bad actors can and will exploit the gaps. A secure, controlled, and compassionate entry system would prevent trafficking, reduce cartel profits, and restore the integrity of America’s immigration process without slamming the door shut on those who come in good faith.

Hope is Still Possible

A new Ellis Island would not be a wall to keep people out. It would be a bridge to welcome them properly.

Migrants would arrive not at chaotic border crossings or overloaded city buses, but at beautiful campuses designed to honor their dignity. They would be processed swiftly. They would be cared for humanely. They would be given a real chance to join American life — or a respectful answer if they could not.

Families would stay together. Children would go to school from day one. Health screenings, job training, language classes, and legal services would be integrated into the process.

No more demonization. No more dehumanization. No more abandonment.

This is the America that both conservatives and liberals can believe in: one that values order and opportunity, strength and compassion, laws and love of neighbor.

We are not too divided to solve this. We are not too broken to fix it.

We only need the courage to admit that the real solution is not walls or open borders. It is something higher, harder, and more human.

It is a New Ellis Island.

And it is time we built it.