How many borders are there in the data-set?
There are 2 borders. US-Canada and US-Mexico.
Which border has the most people coming in?
US-Mexico. US-Mexico has almost 7 billions border crossing whereas US-Canada has about 3 billion. This was surprising because there are more number of entry points (ports) in US-Canada border compared to that of US-Mexico border.
What are the states in the data-set?
There are 15 states. AK (Arkansas), AZ (Arizona), CA (California), ID (Idaho), ME(Maine), MI (Michigan), MN (Minnesota), MT (Montana), ND (North Dakota), NM (New Mexico), NY (New York), OH (Ohio), TX (Texas), VT (Vermont), WA (Washington).
Which state has the most people coming in overall?
Texas followed by California. Both states border with Mexico.
Which state has the most people coming in by border?
Texas (US-Mexico Border) and New York (US-Canada Border).
What are the means of transportation people use?
Personal Vehicle, Personal Vehicle Passengers, Truck Containers Empty, Truck Containers Full, Trucks, Bus Passengers, Buses, Pedestrians, Trains, Train Passengers, Rail Containers Full, and Rain Containers Empty.
What means of transportation is more commonly used overall?
Personal Vehicles.
What means of transportation is common in each border?
Personal Vehicles.
What means of transportation is common in each state?
Personal Vehicles.
The data suggests that there is an overall decreasing trend in the number of US-Border Crossing as a whole from 1996-2020. Specifically, found out that there is an overall decreasing trend in these sub-group across both borders. Since border crossings by other measure of transportation, for example, Rails, Trains and Truck, don't say much about border security because these are often normally legal and occur under the supervision of officials, the decreasing pattern in the number of Personal Vehicle and Pedestrian do imply improved border security.
It was initially expected to see a steep decrease in border crossings from Mexico during 2016-2019 because of the strict border rules enforced by Trump administration, however, analysis showed evidence against it. In fact, there is an obvious increase in the number of border crossings during those years as compared to the earlier years although the overall trend is negative. Realized that border crossings as a whole number don't accurately say much about border security and so we specifically looked at Personal Vehicle and Pedestrian crossings number. Found that the number of Pedestrian and Personal vehicle border crossings from Mexico has been constant between 1996-2020. This do suggest that there have been no improvements made in terms of border security during 2016-2019. Of course, this observation is not 100% conclusive as there are other factors that comes into play which we don't have information about.
In addition, found that Personal Vehicle is the most common measure in almost all the states across both borders. However, the border States closer to Mexico and Canada differ significantly in terms of other measure of transportation. There are more number of Trucks, Rails, and Trains entering into the country through Canada as compared to Mexico. This suggests that Canadian border serves the trade and economy of the US. Also found that large number of Pedestrians are entering into the US through Mexico where as this number is non existent on the US-Canada border side. This might suggest negatively to the border security in US-Mexico region.
Lastly, one interesting thing that is found is that, in TX, the border crossing plummeted to all time lowest during 2011 before it started depicting the usual trend again. A simple Google search "What happened in Texas in 2011" indicated that there were a series of destructive wildfire in the state of Texas in 2011. According to Wikipedia, "During 2011 in Texas, around 31,453 fires had burned 4,000,000 acres or 16,190 square kilometres[3] (about double the previous record), 2,947 homes[3] (1,939 of which were destroyed over the Labor Day weekend), and over 2,700 other structures.[4] 47.3% of all acreage burned in the United States in 2011 was burned in Texas."