AN EXPLANATION
Winter 2009
Middle school isn’t a good time for anyone. Kids are mean, really mean. I was standing outside, huddled next to my peers at “recess” the day a group of us were talking about where I was born. I can’t remember how the conversation was brought up, but I will never forget how it ended. After the majority of them didn’t believe my immigration status, a teacher walked by and I instinctively asked her to back me up – to support me in affirming to my friends that I was British.
“Yea that’s right,” she responded shortly. “You’re a resident alien.”
Alien.
Whatever its formal definition, calling someone an alien in front of middle school-aged children doesn’t go over well.
For a while, I became the alien. After that, I didn’t talk about my immigration status for quite a few years.
Sometimes, I have a hard time blaming people for their misconception of immigration. We are inundated with information about immigration that is often false or misleading.
This might be because when immigration is discussed as a whole, it’s not me people are talking about.
It’s undocumented immigration; most commonly, it’s mentions of the “border wall,” “border security,” and “people crossing the border illegally” that are at the forefront of conversations about “immigration.”
There have even been claims made by President Trump that there is an “invasion” on the southern border of the U.S.
But this isn’t true. In fact, there isn’t even sound data on how many people cross the U.S. border illegally.
What there is data on is how many undocumented immigrants there are in the US. There are about 10.7 million people living in the U.S. undocumented; about 3% of the U.S. population. Of that amount, the majority of undocumented immigrants, about 65%, overstayed their visas.
The majority of undocumented immigrants who currently live in the United States did not arrive here by crossing the southern U.S. border.
This isn’t new information, in fact, this kind of information has been printed in the BBC, NPR, and factcheck.org.
So why are people, including the President, saying these things? Why are people believing them?
Headlines like these may be at the root of confusion:
This is a great place to tell your story and give people more insight into who you are, what you do, and why it’s all about you.
NPR
March 5, 2019
"Migrant Families Arrive In Busloads As Border Crossings Hit 10-Year High"
This is a great place to tell your story and give people more insight into who you are, what you do, and why it’s all about you.
CNN
March 9, 2019
“What happened to all the migrant caravans?”
This is a great place to tell your story and give people more insight into who you are, what you do, and why it’s all about you.
Washington Post
June 28, 2018
“Most immigrants are in the US legally, something most Americans don’t know”
CNN
March 30, 2019
"Immigration lawyers struggle to navigate return-to-Mexico policy"
USA Today
March 30, 2019
And articles like these:
Legal Immigration Statistics:
2016 - Census data and Pew Research estimates that 34.4 million legal immigrants were living in the United States as of 2016. The distribution of immigrants is shown below:
-- Legal permanent residents = 12.2 million
-- Naturalized citizens = 20.2 million
-- Temporary lawful residents = 2.1 million
Undocumented Immigration Statistics:
2016 - Census data and Pew Research estimates that 10.7 million undocumented immigrants were living in the United States as of 2016. The way they entered the country is shown below:
-- Overstayed visa = about 6.9 million
-- Illegally crossed the border = about 3.8 million
CNN produced an “Immigration Fast Facts” document which, in theory, could be very helpful for anyone who is uninformed about the conversation surrounding immigration. Yet, the facts that they produce are so wildly misrepresented, it would almost have been better to leave the public uninformed.
The article lists the number of Lawful Permanent Residents who were granted citizenship in 2017. On its own, this is already a very narrow way of analyzing “legal” immigration, as it excludes those immigrants with a visa and those who are naturalized citizens.
The article then goes on to list all of the undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States as of 2017. The two statistics, which stand at 1.1 million and 12.1 million respectively, immediately paints a picture of a disproportionate amount of undocumented immigrants in relation to legal immigrants.
These two numbers are simply not compatible. Not only this, but the year the statistics were drawn from are different. The "undocumented immigration statistics" implies that the data is from 2017 when it clearly states that the Homeland Security estimates were in 2014. The "legal immigration statistics" are actually from 2017.
The most problematic aspect of this article is not that the facts are inaccurate. Looked at separately, they are legitimate statistics, pulled from federal sources. It's the way that CNN has chosen to display them, to attempt to portray a specific ideology about immigration to the people who stumble across the article. It purposefully tries to show a larger population of undocumented immigrants in comparison to legal immigrants. A portrayal that is inaccurate and very problematic to the immigration conversation.
To demonstrate a better way that CNN may have portrayed their “Immigration Fast Facts,” I made my own.
CNN's "Immigration Fast Facts"
My Take on Immigration Fast Facts
The facts I compiled include data taken from the U.S. Census and Pew Research. I made a point to show data from the same year and drew on statistics that were comparable. After doing so, it’s obvious that legal immigration is substantially larger in quantity than that of undocumented immigration.
This also shows that CNN’s “Immigration Fast Facts” are entirely misleading.
While this is an example of blatant and deceptive information, there are other sources which provide more straightforward and accurate content. However, even these sources can be narrow in focus and don’t discuss many of the bigger issues surrounding immigration.
For example, much of the media coverage that is currently trending about “immigration” is about the southern border. While this news isn’t necessarily misleading, and we cannot discredit the thousands of people who are seeking asylum at the southern border, news articles about this humanitarian crisis are often forgoing the bigger conversation – immigration reform.
For example, on March 24th, 2019, the New York Times published an Op-Ed penned by two representatives, one Republican and one Democrat, from Long Island about their “comprehensive” idea for immigration reform.
It was good – they proposed bi-partisan initiatives that would be positive for undocumented immigrants as well as those who are eager to fortify and expand the Southern border wall.
The comprehensive immigration reform idea, proposed by Long Island representatives Peter King and Tom Suozzi, included some of the following ideas:
A path to citizenship for Dreamers, a group of undocumented youth who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children.
Applications for 3 years of protective status for relatives of dreamers, which can be renewed indefinitely.
4.3 billion in funding for border security, but also 4.3 billion in funding for South American countries who are in need of assistance.
There are, as there always will be, flaws with this plan. The protective status has to be bought individually for a $2,000 fee, a hefty price for an undocumented immigrant, or anyone, who may be of low socio-economic status. In practice, I don’t know if this would be effective, or if it could be utilized.
But, the biggest problem with “A Grand Compromise on Immigration” is that it doesn’t talk about the largest proportion of immigration – legal immigration. Neither representative proposes solutions to the current immigration process; something that is outdated, long, and unnecessarily confusing.
This narrow perspective isn’t confined to articles that propose new immigration reform. Even media outlets with the most liberal, or left-leaning of agendas, miss the mark when it comes to discussing immigration.
While they often focus on the very important humanitarian crisis that has evolved from illegal border crossings, they too often miss out on the conversation surrounding legal immigration.
Why don’t more media sources talk about immigration in its entirety?
I think that there is a reason my roommate assumed I was an undocumented immigrant when she realized I wasn’t a US citizen. That there is a reason why those born in the US grossly overestimated immigration statistics.
The concept of “immigration” has become synonymous with “undocumented immigration” and the two are hardly discernible anymore.