The facts on immigration, legal and otherwise
Colorado was introduced to Stephen Miller’s worldview of immigrants long before he introduced President Donald Trump’s sweeping legal immigration reforms in a hostile press conference this month.
Miller was Trump’s surrogate to Colorado in April 2016 and he spoke at the state assembly in Colorado Springs. Remember, that was the time Trump failed to win a single delegate and Ted Cruz swept the floor. Oh, and a rogue tweet from the state’s official GOP account proclaimed, “Never Trump.” Fun times.
Anyway, Miller delivered a truly odd speech that day. As a reporter I remarked on it to my conservative sources at the event, who seemed less disturbed by it than I was, although decidedly underwhelmed.
For 30 minutes Miller spoke about how dangerous illegal immigrants were.
Miller didn’t state a single fact, figure or statistic about crime among the illegal-immigrant community, probably because the existing statistics on the issue are complicated and nearly impossible to extrapolate meaningful information about the rate of violent crime among undocumented immigrants.
Instead Miller’s speech was based entirely on anecdotes — something most of us work hard not to base our decisionmaking on.
Remember Kate Steinle, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant in 2015, he said, and how tragic it is that 15 years ago a drunk driver in the U.S. illegally killed another victim.
And this is why I struggle so much with the world-view of Miller and Trump. They’ve made no effort to show data driving their view that illegal immigration is a pervasive contributor to crime and that legal immigration is driving unemployment and low wages in America. Trump’s campaign was focused on this issue, yet compelling research on the matter hasn’t been brought forward.
Trump’s legislation would reduce by half the number of people coming into the U.S. The plan outlined a shift away from a lottery and familial based system to one focused on merit-based entry and English language requirements.
It seems unlikely that such a change in the green card system could pass the House and Senate, but it would probably help if the White House were able to document data behind their assumption that a million green cards a year is too many and that unskilled laborers are flooding the market and driving down wages. CNN’s Jim Acosta should have pressed Miller on that point during the press conference, instead of meeting Miller where he began in the realm of big-picture debates about what America’s stance on immigration should be and has been historically.
To Trump’s credit, he is trying to gather statistics to support his world-view. He issued an executive order early in his tenure requiring the Department of Homeland Security to compile data on the population of undocumented individuals in federal prisons.
That report was released Aug. 1 and found that 10.5 percent of inmates in custody at the Bureau of Prisons had final orders for removal. Another 11.2 percent were under investigation for possible removal. That is not a statistically insignificant number, considering that in 2009 it was estimated that undocumented individuals accounted for about 8 percent of the population. However, many of the crimes that landed those individuals in federal prison were immigration-related. Trump’s report conveniently leaves out how many are incarcerated for drugrelated or violent crimes.
A much more realistic sense of crime among the undocumented immigrant population would come from local jails and state prisons, but the DHS report noted it is still working on a way to compile that data.
Miller underwhelmed in Colorado with his thoughts on illegal immigration, and the legal-immigration reform he is backing now will hopefully underwhelm in Congress if he can’t find some hard facts to back up his anecdotes.