Fiction: Being in the United States unlawfully is a crime.
Fact: Not necessarily. Being here unlawfully – such has having expired documents – isn’t a felony, or even a misdemeanor. It’s considered a civil violation, punishable by deportation and possibly a re-entry gap. It’s tantamount to getting a parking ticket, according to Illya Shapira with the Cato Institute, who told Politifact, “You don’t go to jail or receive any other criminal punishment for being in the country illegally – you get deported.” According to FindLaw, simply being unlawfully present is not grounds for incarceration or criminal charges. And even entering the country illegally is merely a misdemeanor under federal criminal law.
Fiction: Undocumented or illegal immigrants don’t pay into the system with taxes and are a drain on social services.
Fact: The National Academy of Sciences has studied this at length, and found that, like for all people, the impact is based on a long list of variables, including age. The NAS found that, “in fact, most immigrants tend to arrive at young working ages, which partly explains why the net fiscal impact of immigration is positive under most scenarios.
For example, under one set of plausible assumptions, the net present value of the fiscal impact of an immigrant with less than a high school education is -$13,000; in contrast, the net present value for an immigrant with more than a high school education is +$198,000,” according to the NAS.
And yes, even illegal immigrants pay taxes at the federal, state and local level, even though they are not eligible for many of those benefits, such as Social Security.
In Oregon, undocumented workers pay $81 million in state and local taxes each year, according to a new report by the Oregon Center for Public Policy.
Fiction: Illegal immigrant populations are havens for terrorists.
Fact: According to the Cato Institute, the chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year while the chance of being murdered in an attack committed by an illegal immigrant is an astronomical 1 in 10.9 billion per year. By contrast, the chance of being murdered by a tourist on a B visa, the most common tourist visa, is 1 in 3.9 million per year.
“Only 10 illegal immigrants became terrorists, a minuscule 0.000038 percent of the 26.5 million who entered from 1975 through 2015," according to a Cato Institute report. "Only one of those illegal immigrants, Ahmed Ajaj, actually succeeded in killing an American as one of the 1993 World Trade Center conspirators." Meanwhile, as is often pointed out, Dylann Roof, the white supremicist who murdered nine people simply because they were black, wasn’t charged with terrorism.
