Illegal Immigrants in America

Approximately 11 million immigrants currently reside in the United States without legal documentation. This group has been the subject of very polarizing debate, especially during the previous election year, and the conversation surrounding it is often emotionally driven and filled with assumptions that may or may not be accurate. With all of the catch-phrases and conventional wisdom surrounding this topic, I thought it was time to learn about the reality of the current situation in regards to illegal immigrants and decide on a rational approach to fix the problem. In the coming paragraphs I will provide the information and statistics about different aspects of this issue, such as the number of illegal immigrants, where they hail from, the rates of crime among illegal immigrants within the United States, how they come here, and how much they contribute to taxes and take out of welfare programs.

When discussing illegal immigrants, we need to understand who this population is made up of. The stereotype of most illegal immigrants being Latin American is not inaccurate, although there is a sizable minority from other regions as well, and the reasons that the majority are Latino are only a matter of geography. In March of this year, the New York Times released an article titled Here’s the reality about illegal immigrants in the United States in which they provided information on the proportion of illegal immigrants and their countries of origin. It states that of the total 11 million, about 6.2 million hail from Mexico (although a Pew Research Center report claimed this number dropped from 6.4 million in 2009 to 5.6 million in 2015), 723,000 from Guatemala, 465,000 from El Salvador, and 337,000 from Honduras (these make up the vast majority of Latino immigrants). There are also sizable numbers from China (268,000), India (267,000) and Korea (198,000), with the rest coming from various other countries. While there are many newcomers, a majority have been living in the States for some years. According to the Migration Policy Institute, an officially non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C., about 60% of illegal immigrants have lived here for ten years or more, and about 20% have been here for five years or less, which leaves about another 20% that have been here anywhere from six to nine years. This means that an estimated 80% have been living here for more than five years.

There is often a charge made against illegal immigrants that they are criminals, meaning that they engage in criminal behavior while living inside the U.S. This is a serious accusation which, if true, must have great effects on how we approach the issue, and so the validity of it must be understood. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that of the total 11 million illegal immigrants, those convicted of any crime at all adds up to about 7.5%, or 820,000. The percentage that have committed an actual felony, however, is about 2.7%, or 300,000 people. By comparison, a 2011 research paper titled Growth in the U.S. Ex-Felon and Ex-Prisoner Population, 1948 To 2010, stated that the percentage of people in the overall U.S. population who have been convicted of a felony to be about 8.6%. We can easily speculate on why this difference exists, but what is important is that it does exist. The narrative that paints illegal immigrants as highly prone to committing crimes in the United States is not only unsupported but actually contradicted by the evidence. This means the fear of illegals as violent criminals is unjustified, but also that there are obviously a number who are criminals, even if a small minority. The relevance of this to the overall discussion is that any person illegally residing in the country who decides to commit a serious crime that would make then a danger to others, ought to be deported immediately. However, focusing on crimes committed by specific illegal immigrants and using them to represent the whole in any meaningful way, is a fallacy called the Hasty Generalization. It is illogical and leads to an unfounded stereotyping that hinders any rational approach to addressing the issue, and will only cause unnecessary problems.
To be fair, some people argue that their illegal presence makes them criminals, but here I employ what I call the Mulaney Principle, taken from a phrase John Mulaney said in his 2019 stand-up comedy special. "Just because you're accurate doesn't mean you're interesting." 

  The conventional wisdom tends to be that these immigrants sneak across the southern border that we share with Mexico, but increasingly more have entered the United States legally with temporary visas and then do not leave when those visas expire. The Center for Migration Studies reports that between 2007 and 2014 a majority of immigrants becoming non-lawful residents have done so by overstaying temporary visas (About 66% of new people joining “illegal” ranks in 2014).  However, just less than half still come across the border illegally, demonstrating that the southern border requires as much attention as our internal immigration enforcement. The most effective and efficient ways to do this are up for debate, as far as I am personally concerned, given the complicated nature of protecting the border and the different types of equipment that may be needed in different areas. Others may have more insight on this than I do. 

The jobs that illegal immigrants work range from agricultural work to journalists and more. However, according to the Pew Research Center (5 Facts about Illegal Immigration in the U.S.), these undocumented immigrants are over represented in the farming and construction industry, where they make up 26% and 15% of the workforce, respectively. As of 2014, an estimated 8 million of the total 11 million were a part of the U.S. workforce, accounting for about 5% of the overall number of American workers who were employed or looking for work.

The evasion of taxes that comes with living in the United States illegally is also a hot-button issue for many people, and understandably so. Numbers on this are not so solid, which is unsurprising given the difficulty of estimating tax payment by a population who, at least when they pay income taxes, often do so under fake Social Security numbers. In September of 2016 The Atlantic published an article titled The Truth About Undocumented Immigrants and Taxes, which highlighted the fact that because many illegal aliens pay taxes under fake or stolen Social Security numbers, they pay in money that they are almost certain to never see again. This is the result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which stipulated that any employer knowingly employing an illegal immigrant will be committing a crime. But, in order to not make employers into miniature immigration agents, it also instructed them to accept any documentation reasonably appearing on its face to be real. This opened a black market for fake or stolen Social Security cards and birth certificates, which then brought in payroll taxes from a portion of these immigrants. In the same article in The Atlantic the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Department, Stephen Goss, is referenced as estimating that about 1.8 million illegal immigrants worked under fake or stolen Social Security cards in 2010, and that about $13 billion was paid into the system by illegal immigrants with about $1 billion being paid back in benefits. It is hard to estimate how many pay taxes though, as many are paid in cash like other under-the-table workers and as a result never fill out W-2 forms. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that about 50% pay income taxes, though I have not seen this number substantiated elsewhere yet. People who reside here illegally may also pay taxes in lieu of a Social Security number by using an Individual taxation Identification Number (ITIN). It is worth noting that many immigrants living here without legal authorization very often pay local taxes, even when not paying federal income taxes. 
As Snopes.com points out, Illegal immigrants are not eligible for any federal Healthcare programs, though "six states and the District of Columbia have rules that allow undocumented immigrant children to avail themselves of Medicaid benefits, and undocumented immigrants are also entitled to emergency medical care." (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrant-benefits/)
They are also not legally eligible for welfare benefits like food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This legal obstacle can be bypassed if they have children or other family members who are legal residents or citizens since those individuals are eligible for such benefits. Children are also guaranteed access to public schools regardless of immigration status, which also gives low-income children (including undocumented ones) access to school food programs. I can not name anyone with certainty who would want to starve a child to death for not having a proper form of legal documentation though.

                These are the bare facts and statistics, without the accompaniment of any specific proposed policy changes in order to address the issue as it stands. My own reluctance to extend this is both because of the fear of dragging it on with too long of an article, and because of my realization that I have many more details to look into before I can confidently say that I stand by a specific approach. I can only hope this helped shed some light on the situation and help some people think more rationally about the topic.