The third in a series.
In a speech in Iowa, on October 16, Donald Trump said that, if again president, he would restrict immigration from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and "anywhere else that threatens our security.”
On December 16, on Truth Social, Trump posted: “ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS POISONING THE BLOOD OF OUR NATION. THEY’RE COMING FROM PRISONS, FROM MENTAL INSTITUTIONS — FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. WITHOUT BORDERS & FAIR ELECTIONS, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” (All the CAPS are his.)
Is Donald Trump right to stroke these kinds of fears?
The 9/11 attackers were, after all, in our country on business or tourist visas. The brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon were children of refugees from war-torn Chechnya.
Then again, the bombers who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City were homegrown — as was the Unabomber.
According to a Cato Institute analysis, studying the years between 1975 and 2017, there were 3,518 persons killed on U.S. soil in terrorist attacks. Foreign-born terrorists were responsible for 3,037 of those deaths — 2,977 on September 11, 2001. Of the other 481 victims, 413 are known to have been murdered by native-born Americans. The remaining 68 by unidentified terrorists.
During the 43 years studied, the chance of being killed in our country by a foreign terrorist here on a common type of travel visa was 1 in 4.1 million per year. The chance of being killed on our soil in a terrorist attack by an actual refugee was 1 in 3.8 billion per year. The chance of being killed in a terrorist attack by an illegal immigrant was zero.
During these years, there were 192 foreign-born terrorists known to have planned, attempted, or carried out attacks on U.S. soil.
During these same years, there were 788 native-born terrorists known to have planned, attempted, or carried out attacks on our soil. The chance of being murdered by a native-born terrorist was 1 in 28 million per year.
During these years. the annual chance of being murdered in any kind of non-terror homicide was 264 times greater than dying at the hands of a foreign-born terrorist.
So, what about murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, and other criminals?
According to research released this year by Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky, immigrants are 30% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. born individuals who are white. Whan Abramitzky’s data is expanded to include black Americans — whose prison rates are higher than the general population — the likelihood of immigrant incarceration is 60% lower than for people born here.
Another CATO study found that in 2017, for persons between the ages of 18 and 54, there were an estimated 1,926,390 native-born Americans, 106,431 illegal immigrants, and 52,424 legal immigrants incarcerated. This yielded an incarceration rate of 1,471 native-born Americans per 100,000 native-born Americans, 756 illegal immigrants per 100,000 illegal immigrants, and 364 legal immigrants per 100,000 legal immigrants.
In other words, in 2017 anyway, illegal immigrants were 49% less likely than native-born Americans to be incarcerated. Legal immigrants were 75% less likely.
If illegal immigrants held immigration offenses in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities are subtracted, this lowers the incarceration rate for illegals to 397 per 100,000.
The Marshall Project, a news organization reporting on the U.S. criminal justice system, has found that cities which have had a large increase in immigrant population have not invariably experience an increase in crime.
What about the burden to our society?
According to the Pew Research Center, in 2021 there were 10.5 unauthorized immigrants in the United States. This was down from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007, and lower than in every year between 2005 and 2015.
Most of the unauthorized immigrants were from Mexico (4.1 million). And unauthorized immigration was (and is) increasing from every region of the world — Central America, Caribbean, South America, Asia, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2021 the foreign-born population was 14.1% of our entire population. The illegal immigrant population was 22% of the foreign-born population, and 3% of the entire population. The states with the largest illegal immigrant populations were California (1.9 million), Texas (1.6 million), Florida (900,000), New York (600,000), New Jersey (450,000) and Illinois (400,000).
In 2021, 49% of the immigrants in our country were also naturalized citizens.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2022 the foreign-born accounted for 18.1% of the U.S. civilian work force, up from 17.4% in 2021. From 2021 to 2022, the unemployment rate of the foreign-born labor force declined 5.6% to 3.4%. During the same period, the jobless rate among the native-born declined from 5.3% to 3.7%.
Hispanics accounted for nearly one-half of the foreign-born labor force. Asians, one-quarter. Foreign-born men participated in the labor force at a rate of 77.4%. Native-born men, 66.0%. Foreign-born women at 55.0%. Native-born women, 57.2%.
Foreign-born workers, in 2022, were more likely than native-born workers to be employed in service occupations, natural resources (which I assume to mean working in oil and gas fields — hard work that), construction, maintenance, transportation, and material moving. They were less likely to be employed in management, professions, and sales.
In 2022, the median usual weekly earnings of the foreign-born wage and salary workers was $945, compared with $1,087 for native-born wage and salary earners.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said this, in 2019, about immigration:
“Immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy in many ways. They work at high rates and make up more than a third of the workforce in some industries. Their geographic mobility helps local economies respond to worker shortages, smoothing out bumps that could otherwise weaken the economy. Immigrant workers help support the aging native-born population, increasing the number of workers compared to retirees and bolstering the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. And children born to immigrant families are upwardly mobile, promising future benefits not only to their families, but to the U.S. economy overall.”
But, during the Biden administration, an ever-increasing number of asylum-seekers have entered our country as parolees until their cases are adjudicated in our immigration courts. It is often up to three years before a case is decided. Meanwhile, many thousands of these persons are dependent on government and private and religious charities to survive. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has described it as a problem he does not see “an ending to” and, if not somehow resolved, “will destroy New York City.”
Next week: Immigration Politics
Thank you for reading this third installment of my series on immigration — which is. more than anything else, my endeavor to learn enough about this important issue so that it will be difficult to misdirect me on it. I hope you will find what I have written useful to your understanding. Throughout, however, I have been mindful that I have been doing this “deep dive” during the Advent season — when it might well be better for me personally to devote my contemplations and effort elsewhere. I am reduced to reminding myself that Joseph, Mary and Jesus were, for a time, refugees into Egypt.
Sources and links:
Alex Nowrasteh, “Terrorists by Immigration Status and Nationality.” Cato Institute, May 7, 2019.
Michelangelo Landgrave and Alex Nowrasteh, “Criminal Immigrants in 2017.” Cato Institute, March 4, 2019.
The Marshall Project reports on immigrant crime
Pew Research Center, "What We Know About Unauthorized Immigrants Living in the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Foreign-born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics — 2022,” news release, May 18, 2023.
A. Sherman, D. Trisi, C. Stone, S. Gonzales, S. Parrott, “Immigrants Contribute Greatly to U.S. Economy, Despite Adminstration’s ‘Public Charge’ Rule Rationale,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 15, 2019.
Merry Christmas!
Thanks, Mike for researching and writing these articles. Immigration has become such a hot button topic in our politics that it threatens our democracy. It is imperative that people know the facts behind the rhetoric. Your research and insight on these issues is invaluable to those of us who want to make informed decisions when we vote. Merry Christmas!