Part 2:  Penetrating the myths

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Twelve million people now live in the United States illegally, more than at any previous time. There are many solid reasons why the United States should have a rigorously enforced immigration policy. However, these reasons have little to do with certain myths that have entered this debate. Among these myths are contentions that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately violent criminals, shirk paying taxes while exploiting generous social services, take jobs from American citizens, and threaten public health.

Formulating effective immigration policy requires a comprehensive understanding of immigration’s underlying reality, including beneficial and harmful impacts. Verifiable evidence published by federal agencies and peer-reviewed scientific journals are generally a better source for developing this understanding than the allegations of such professional gadflies as CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

Mr. Dobbs tells his audience, for example, that one-third of U.S. jail and prison inmates are not U.S. citizens. U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics say that in 2005, 6.4 percent of all federal and state prisoners were not citizens, down from 6.8 percent in 2000.

Men, age 18 to 39, comprise the vast majority of the prison population. Among this group, 3.5 percent of native-born Americans are incarcerated, as opposed to 0.7 percent of immigrants, both documented and undocumented. In other words, the rate at which native-born Americans are in prison is five times greater than that for immigrants. This holds true for every ethnic group, without exception. Native-born Hispanic men, for example, are 7 times more likely to be in prison than foreign-born Hispanic men.

The National Academy of Sciences, Cato Institute, and the Social Security Administration all agree that immigrants who are here illegally contribute substantially more in taxes than they consume in services. Undocumented immigrants pay sales taxes. The Social Security Administration (SSA) estimates that about 75 percent of them pay payroll taxes, to the tune of about $8 billion annually that they will never be able to claim. As of 2005, SSA’s “suspense file,” containing paid-in taxes that cannot be matched to a social security number, was at $519 billion, leading irreverent types to suggest that we finance the coming social security crisis by relaxing immigration enforcement.

Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and most other public benefits. Determined individuals can game the system. But a University of California Study found that only 2 percent of illegal Mexican immigrants had ever received welfare, and only 3 percent got food stamps, while 84 percent paid taxes. A Princeton University study of 6,000 undocumented Mexicans found that 7 percent had received Supplemental Security Income, and 5 percent or less had received AFDC, food stamps, or unemployment compensation. The U.S. Department of Education and the Census Bureau say that in 2000, only 1.5 percent of elementary schoolchildren and 3 percent of secondary children were undocumented.

As for taking jobs from Americans, the conservative Cato Institute found that immigrants do not increase joblessness, even among lowest-paid workers. Cato could find “no statistically reliable correlation” between immigration and unemployment. The more liberal Brookings Institution observes that, “The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data show that recent immigrants are healthier than U.S. natives in almost every particular. General health indicators like birth weight and infant mortality are better among babies born to immigrants than to U.S.-born mothers. Interestingly, the longer that they live in the U.S., the more immigrants’ health indicators decline.

Advocates for strict immigration enforcement who are themselves the descendants of immigrants are fond of pointing out that their ancestors came here legally. That‚Äôs a morally and emotionally satisfying distinction, but it‚Äôs also somewhat misleading.  Before 1921, there were no immigration laws. My paternal grandmother‚Äôs family fled the Irish potato famine. When I try to imagine what would have happened if U.S. immigration law had existed then, I cannot, in turn, imagine the family patriarch saying, ‚ÄúDang, if we went to America, we‚Äôd be illegal aliens, so we‚Äôll just stay here and starve.‚Äù

The 1921 immigration law put strict quotas on ‚Äúundesirable‚Äù Eastern and Southern Europeans, like‚ĶItalians. So, they came in illegally, in droves. Within four years, the Immigration Service estimated that 1.4 million illegal immigrants were living here: ‚ÄúThe figures presented are worthy of very serious thought, especially when it is considered that such a great percentage of our population … whose first act upon reaching our shores was to break our laws by entering in a clandestine manner.‚Äù Sound familiar?

Discovering the reality behind inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric does not lessen our need to get control of illegal immigration. Instead, it can help us understand how best to do so.