MYTH: Immigrants bring crime.
FACT: Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. A Time magazine article shows that immigrants actually reduce the overall crime rate.
MYTH: Immigrants don’t pay taxes.
FACT: The estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. pay and estimated $11.64 billion in state and local taxes every year—as much as $3.1 billion in California alone. [source: ] Roughly half are believed to be paying state and federal income tax and paying into Social Security that they will never see. Imagine how much more these undocumented workers could contribute if they were brought out of the shadows and allowed to work legally.
MYTH: Immigrants don’t pay into Social Security.
FACT: The federal Social Security Administration reports that undocumented immigrants using an unauthorized Social Security number—who are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits—contributed an astounding $100 billion into the fund over the past decade.
MYTH: Immigrants drain the social services system.
FACT: Welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and most other safety net services require proof of legal immigration status. Even documented immigrants have to be in the U.S. for more than five years before they can access these services
Even with documents, non-citizen immigrants are about 25% less likely to be signed up for Medicaid than poor people born in the U.S. and 37% less likely to receive food stamps.
Citizen children of illegal immigrants qualify for social safety net benefits. Also, even if undocumented, immigrant children can go to school and get emergency medical care. But even the business-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce notes that most economists agree that basic schooling and healthcare are an investment in the future, when these children work and pay taxes.
If there was a path to legalization, it bring an additional $25 billion in government funds, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.
MYTH: Immigrants send all their money back to their home countries.
FACT: Intuitively, immigrants are going to send money back home if they are forced to leave family behind. However, all immigrants spend some of their income here. In fact, undocumented immigrants alone contribute roughly $80 billion annually in different taxes. Hispanics collectively have buying power of $1.2 trillion.
MYTH: Immigrants take American jobs.
FACT: If all the undocumented workers were deported, the U.S. would actually lose jobs. In part, because many immigrants are also entrepreneurs and employers. In larger part, because they often fill jobs—in retail, agriculture, landscaping, hospitality—that most U.S. citizens don’t seek. And because they’re doing this work, it expands those industries and creates more middle-class jobs such as managers, marketing, bookkeeping and jobs typically sought by U.S. citizens.
Keeping workers in the shadows simply emboldens employers to drive down wages and working conditions. Immigrant workers experience the highest rates of sexual harassment and death or injury on the job.
MYTH: Immigrants burden the healthcare system and drive up rates.
FACT: The National Immigration Law Center found that undocumented immigrants spend less than half what U.S. citizens spend for medical services. In fact, 30% of immigrants use no health care at all. Combined with immigrant’s high labor force participation rate and tax contributions, immigrants contribute far more than they ever use. And our healthcare system has benefited from an influx of dedicated, talented healthcare workers from countries like the Philippines and India.
MYTH: Immigrants just need to follow the law.
FACT: Our current immigration system is broken. According to the U.S. State Department, over four million people are on a waiting list and, for some countries the Philippines and Mexico, people have been waiting over 20 years for approval of a family-sponsored visa.
Many trying to enter the country are escaping violence and war so extreme that they really should be considered refugees. These immigrants just can’t wait. So, they cross the border illegally. They pay exorbitant fees and are often victimized by their smugglers. For too many, the journey ends in death. According to federal records, more than 6,000 immigrants have died crossing the southern border since 1998.
Many whose families have lived in the United States for generations might falsely believe it’s easy to enter the country legally. “My family did. Why can’t immigrants today?” It’s important to remember that for our first 100 years, anyone could come here. After that, rules were much more relaxed than they are today.
It’s important to remember that most immigrants in the United States followed the rules and have permission to be here. Many undocumented immigrants also entered legally but let their visas expire.
MYTH: Immigrants keep pouring into the U.S.
FACT: The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. has been decreasing steadily since 2007.
MYTH: We have no idea who is coming into our country as a refugee.
FACT: Screening refugees is an extremely lengthy and rigorous process, which includes multiple background checks, fingerprinting, interviews, health screenings and applications with multiple intelligence, law enforcement and security agencies. The average length of time it takes for the United Nations and the United States government to approve refugee status is 18 to 24 months. Source: http://www.tolerance.org/immigration-myths
MYTH: Immigrants don’t want to learn English.
FACT: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of first generation immigrants in the U.S. speak English “well” or “very well.” Earlier groups of immigrants also tended to hold on to their cultures and language. For example, when the U.S. was fighting in the First World War, there were over 700 German-language newspapers, four decades after German immigration had peaked in the U.S.
MYTH: Banning immigrants and refugees from majority-Muslim countries will protect the United States from terrorists.
FACT: Between 1975 and 2015, no fatalities have been committed in the United States by foreign-born extremists from the countries covered by President Trump’s executive order to ban Muslims.
MYTH: Our border with Mexico is not secure.
FACT: In 2014, when there was a dramatic surge in kids and teens who pouring in from Central America, most of them intentionally sought the first Border Patrol agent they could find upon crossing the border. They were seeking asylum.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Department of Homeland Security has said that “the suggestion that individuals that have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the southwest border is categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or facts on the ground.” ADL also reports that according to a 2015 U.S Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism report, “there are no known international terrorist organizations operating in Mexico, despite several erroneous reports to the contrary during 2014.” They also note that most domestic terrorism since 2002 has been linked to U.S. citizens.
