The media keep lying about the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The media keep lying about the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
They’ve been using the same number for 20 years
Last weekend, Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick J.D. Vance sat for an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press host Kristen Welker.
There was one moment in particular that stuck out, and it was when Welker brought up Trump and Vance’s proposed plan of mass deportations. While defending the Trump’s proposal, Vance noted that there are now “25 million illegal aliens in this country right now.” Welker balked at Vance’s number and responded with a statistic from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), arguing the number is “closer to eight million.”
The idea that there are only eight million illegal immigrants living in the United States is, of course, absurd. The media have spent the last 20 years claiming the number was higher, at 11 million. Welker herself used the 11 million number just three months ago in an interview with Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Yet somehow, with record illegal immigration under Biden, Welker claims that that number has declined by three million people in just a few months.
In responding to Welker, Rubio chuckled at the notion that there are 11 million illegal immigrants and correctly pointed out that the number is over a decade old.
Welker isn’t the only so-called “journalist” who has used this erroneous number. Earlier this year, CNN’s Jake Tapper claimed there were 10 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. when asking a question during a CNN GOP primary debate. In March, ABC News’ Jon Karl used the 11 million number on ABC’s Sunday political show This Week and actually referred to illegal immigrants as “undocumented citizens and residents.” In April, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes repeated the 11 million figure in a segment with a Time Magazine journalist who had written a piece that also referenced the number. A few weeks ago, MSNBC contributor and former RNC Chair Michael Steele cited the 11 million figure on his network’s air.
So if this number is obviously a massive undercount, why do these journalists and commentators—who are all highly paid for their expertise—continue to repeat it? What is the real number?
What’s the real number of illegals in the United States?
To indicate just how old the 11 million number is, consider the fact that in August 2001, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on the then-current law enforcement strategy at the southern border. According to the GAO, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States at that time was between five and 11 million. A year later, experts on the Arizona Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights used the 11 million figure.
That means the 11 million figure is at least 23 years old. Even the liberal Brookings Institution claimed at the time that the number of illegal immigrants in this country was between six and nine million.
So how many illegal immigrants are in the United States right now? The short answer is likely at least 40 million, maybe more.
According to recently released data from Biden’s own DHS, more than 10.5 million migrants have crossed into the United States just in the last three years alone. That figure represents a population greater than 44 U.S. states, and is based on border encounters and apprehensions (which is the closest thing to crossings). It also does not include the number of migrants who have evaded capture by Border Patrol in that span, which the agency estimates is over two million.
Because the Biden administration has effectively decriminalized illegal immigration, some portion of the 10.5 million who have arrived during Biden’s term do have legal status (asylum, refugee, or Temporary Protected Status). Still, these immigrants otherwise fit the typical profile of an illegal immigrant in terms of how they entered the United States, along with their education and income profiles. If they are counted as such, that means there are close to 20 million illegal immigrants in the country based on the officially used 11 million number before Biden took office and the number he has let in.
However, 20 million illegal immigrants is still an undercount. It assumes that the number of illegal immigrants in this country remains unchanged at 11 million from 2001 to 2021, which of course is untrue unless you believe that migrants just stopped coming to the United States during this period. Even during Trump’s presidency, there were around three million illegal immigrants who crossed the southern border into the U.S.
The only reason the 11 million figure continues to be used, as conservative pundit and author Ann Coulter argued in her book Adios America, is that it is likely “the smallest number illegal immigration advocates think they can get away with.” If Americans knew the true number, they’d be outraged. Support for harsh enforcement measures like deportations would also likely increase.
The true number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. prior to the Biden arrivals was likely closer to 30 million. In her book, Coulter references a 2005 report by two Bear Stearns analysts, Robert Justich and Betty Ng, who both estimated the number of illegal immigrants in the United States was being undercounted by half. Other commentators, like my former boss Tucker Carlson, have also cited the Bear Stearns estimate.
Justich and Ng discounted the census data because it relied on illegal aliens answering surveys. As Justich told the Wall Street Journal, “The assumption that illegal people will fill out a census form is the most ridiculous concept I have ever heard of.” People who have left their families, paid huge sums of money to smugglers, trekked thousands of miles, and broken American law to enter this country don’t have much incentive to fill out questionnaires from the U.S. government. — Coulter writing in Adios America
The analysts found that between 1995 and 2003, remittances to Mexico had increased by nearly 200 percent while the number of Mexicans living in the U.S. had supposedly only increased by 56 percent during that same span. Median weekly wages had only increased by ten percent, meaning the increasing in remittances were not due to improved economic factors.
The analysts also looked at housing permits and school enrollment figures, and compared the real growth compared to official government statistics. In one example, they found that housing permits in select New Jersey towns had increased by more than 600 percent even though the state had only reported a population growth of less than 6 percent in those same towns.
Thirteen years after the Bear Stearns report, researchers from Yale University published a study that put the number of illegals immigrants in the U.S. at 22 million. The researchers also noted the figure could be as high as 29 million.
That study was six years ago, before Biden decided to let in another 10-12 million illegals immigrants. Assuming the most liberal estimates—that there were 20+ million illegal immigrants in 2005 according to the Bear Stearns report and 29 million in 2018 according to the Yale researchers—then there are approximately 40 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.
Why can’t we get the real number?
In 2019, Trump attempted to add a citizenship question to the U.S. Census. That would not have conclusively determined the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S., but it would have been a start. How many illegal immigrants reside in each state? How many states have inflated population numbers because they are counting illegal immigrants? States with greater populations get more seats in the House of Representatives, which means states with more illegal immigrants are diluting the voting power of American citizens.
A citizenship question on the census would have helped answer these questions. But the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s efforts to force that question on census forms.
Congress could easily pass a law mandating a count, but it never will. The Democrat platform on immigration would collapse if Americans knew the true number of illegals immigrants in the country.
In theory, individual states would be able to get the most accurate count. They could, for example, mandate companies include citizenship questions on lease agreements and mortgage applications. States could easily include citizenship questions to parents of publicly educated schoolchildren, but federal law makes that illegal.
The media, meanwhile, is derelict in its supposed role as the Fourth Estate. Instead of challenging and questioning elected leaders on immigration, “journalists” like Welker, Tapper, and others choose to parrot government propaganda. They are mouthpieces for a government that is suppressing the truth from the public.
Americans are being lied to. The federal government does not want the American people to know how many illegal immigrants are living in this country. Most are from the Third World, which means they lack the basic education and skills that are required for self-sufficiency in the American economy. That means their presence is costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year through public education, housing, hospital and medical bills, and welfare.
The fact that there aren’t any official government statistics on these costs is outrageous to the say the least. The United States is a country, not a charity. Americans deserve to know who is in their country and how much we are paying to import, house, feed, and educate foreigners over our own fellow citizens.