Myth: Immigration increases crime rates
One of the most persistent political arguments raised by immigration opponents is that immigrants bring crime to the United States.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best efforts,” former President Donald Trump famously said during his 2016 campaign.
“Has anyone seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’?” asked Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance at a meeting with the Milwaukee Police Association in August. “We know that the creation of large ethnic enclaves like this in our country can, in some cases, lead to increased crime rates.”
In fact, the opposite is true. Numerous studies have shown that immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens. One study of incarceration rates going back more than 150 years, from 1870 to 2020, found that U.S.-born citizens were consistently more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants. And the gap between the two groups has only widened in recent years, with immigrants now 60% less likely to be incarcerated than native-born citizens, according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.
Claims that immigrants are causing a spike in crime in the places they settle have also been proven false. Overall, crime incidents, including violent crimes, have declined in cities across the country since their peak during the pandemic, according to FBI data. And although politicians claim border cities are overwhelmed by lawlessness and disorder, data shows crime rates, including murder, are much lower than the national average.
For Iraida Flores, a businesswoman in Phoenix, Arizona, the relationship between immigrants and criminals is exhausting to hear. Flores moved to the Grand Canyon State from Sonora, Mexico, in 2004, hoping to make his entrepreneurial dreams a reality. Since then, her seafood wholesale business, El Mar de Cortez Corp., has grown, serving restaurants throughout the city and employing more than a dozen people. But despite the example she and other immigrants set, politicians continue to demonize them.
She said this rhetoric is the same every election year and ignores the positive contributions of many immigrants who left their home countries in search of a better future.
“Politicians talk about immigrant communities like they’re criminals, like they’re really bad people,” Flores said. “But when immigrants leave their countries, the cultures and lands of their birth, they do so in search of opportunity. And seeking new opportunities means they can work and get ahead. That means we are here with that intention.”
She added that criminalizing all immigrants is harmful and unfair to the work many immigrants have put in to bring about change in their host communities.
“You can’t generalize or criminalize an entire immigrant group because there are people who have lived in this country for decades and they bring benefits to the table,” Flores said. spoke. “They benefit the economy, they benefit the community, and they deserve to be treated with respect.”
Myth: An invasion is occurring on the U.S.-Mexico border.
During the campaign, politicians began to drum up voters about an “invasion” on the country’s southern border, but the situation is more complex. At the end of 2023, the number of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border reached a record high. In December 2023, more than 300,000 encounters between border officials and migrants occurred on the country’s southern border, a record high. Experts believe this surge is partly the result of sharply increasing global migration patterns caused by economic strains during the pandemic.
By January 2024, the all-time high recorded in December had plummeted to about 176,000. Ultimately, that number fell to a three-year low since before the pandemic. Encounters rose slightly in August, the most recent month for which data is available, to 107,503 from 104,101 in July.
Myth: Fentanyl is smuggled by immigrants
The U.S.-Mexico border stretches for approximately 3,000 miles and includes 26 land ports of entry. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are monitoring both ports and the space between them. According to a report by the US Department of Homeland Security, the majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the US through legal channels by citizens. More than 90% of the seized fentanyl is confiscated by border officials at land ports of entry, according to DHS, and cartels primarily rely on U.S. citizens to move the drug across the border. In fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, 86.4% of fentanyl trafficking convictions were citizens.
Myth: Immigrants use public benefits
In most cases, immigrants who are not U.S. citizens are not eligible for public benefits. Federal programs such as Section 8 Housing Assistance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) are all strictly aimed at U.S. citizens.
Immigrants who are not citizens cannot receive subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and cannot apply for federal health insurance coverage through the Marketplace.
However, if you are a legal permanent resident, you may be able to take advantage of some public benefits once you reach five years of residence.
Federal protections are in place to ensure immigrants receive care if their lives are at risk. Emergency Medicaid helps immigrants without legal status receive emergency medical treatment. Additionally, several benefits are available to immigrant women under the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program.
Eligibility for state public benefit programs varies by country and ranges from obtaining a driver’s license to in-state tuition and scholarships.
One hundred people will be sworn in on Tuesday, October 1, in Plains, Georgia, during a naturalization ceremony hosted by the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park in honor of the former president’s 100th birthday. Immigrants go through a long and complicated process to obtain citizenship. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Myth: Obtaining American citizenship is easy
Obtaining citizenship is an expensive and complex process with multiple steps. And with the naturalization and asylum system backlogged, hopeful immigrants face long wait times.
Those seeking legal status through marriage must overcome many hurdles to prove the marriage is genuine, including regular interviews with immigration officials. Couples often spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and years on the application process.
Childhood Arrivals Deferred Action provides protection from deportation and temporary work permits to people without legal status who entered the country as minors, but they must meet strict criteria to qualify. No. This includes living in the United States since 2007, arriving in the United States before the age of 16, having no significant criminal history, currently enrolled in high school, and having a diploma or GED. Includes what you are getting.
DACA recipients who are accepted into the program must reapply for renewal every two years. Recipients can also apply for legal immigration status if they qualify through family members or employment-based immigration, but the DACA program is currently frozen. Applications are still being accepted but are not being processed amid ongoing litigation that threatens to permanently end the program.
Asylum seekers must undergo fear screening by immigration authorities to determine whether concerns about persecution or threat to life warrant granting protection in the United States, new guidance issued by the Biden administration says. It prohibits consideration of asylum applications in cases where there are a large number of contacts with migrants. It will be more difficult for people to apply for asylum.
People hoping to resolve their asylum or refugee cases may wait years. In 2019, the number of undocumented migrants swelled to more than 1 million, and the number has only doubled in the following years. As of September, the number of pending immigration cases exceeded 3 million. The average time it takes to resolve a case is four years, according to Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse, an organization that compiles and analyzes federal immigration data.
Myth: Immigrants don’t pay taxes
Approximately 11 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, and all of them pay some form of tax. An analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey, an annual demographic survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, estimates that immigrants contribute $383 billion in federal taxes and $196 billion in state and local taxes. And while people without legal status cannot receive Social Security benefits, the government receives about $13 billion annually from the salaries of noncitizen workers.
Saul Rascon immigrated to the United States with his family when he was five years old. He received DACA status in high school and has been employed ever since. He is currently working with Aliento Votes, a pro-immigrant voter assistance campaign. Accusations that immigrants don’t pay taxes irritate Rascon, who sees it as a way to reduce the demographic group’s contribution.
“It’s especially frustrating when immigrants are branded as an economic deficit and a nuisance, when they’ve been proven time and time again that they’re not,” he said.
The problem is that the claim is believable to the average voter without additional research, Rascon said. And that claim is dangerous for all immigrants, including himself, because it can provoke hostility toward the entire community.
He added that the spread of disinformation about immigration is harmful not only because it fuels anti-immigrant sentiment, but also because it makes it more difficult to find common ground when changing a country’s immigration system. While Republican politicians have focused on strengthening their support base on immigration, Democrats have moved to the right on the issue, increasingly focusing on enforcement policies to win as many votes as possible.
“We will no longer focus our energy on Dreamers, DACA, illegal aliens who have been here, and tax donations,” Rascon said. “We’re seeing a shift towards border security, which is not counterproductive, but it’s not the best use of our time and resources.”
