When Facts Don’t Cooperate

A guy named Daniel Greenfield writes a column http://tinyurl.com/q89c5uw claiming that illegal immigration is one of the factors responsible for gun violence in major U.S. cities and that granting amnesty to illegal immigration would cause gang and gun violence to increase so significantly in major cities that their economies will collapse and that a “ripple effect” would extend to suburbs and entire states.

He describes what will happen to New York if amnesty is granted:

“Before long, the marginal gangs will swell to monstrous sizes controlling entire neighborhoods. Anyone who can will flee and the city will once again become what it was.”

He adds, “The same process will take place in most major American cities.”

His proof is that crime increased in major cities after the 1986 amnesty.  The cause of increases in crime after 1986, argues Greenfield, is that an influx of illegal aliens after the amnesty took jobs that poor Americans would have otherwise taken.  As a result of lesser available jobs, the jobless Americans took to crime.

Greenfield’s problem is that the data don’t support him.  First of all, the economy was booming during the 80s, and the unemployment rate fell steadily from the mid-80s through 1990 all over the nation and in every demographic.  Second, the number of murders in Chicago, which had been falling during the 80s decade, continued to fall after 1986 and only increased in the early 90s during a mild recession. Then after the mild recession, murders in Chicago continued to decline where in 2013 the number of murders was considerably less than in 1986 despite the influx of millions of illegal aliens.

In NBER Working Paper No.12518, authors George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger and Gordon Hanson examine the effect of immigration on crime.  The authors point out that even without increased immigration, most of the unemployment and increase crime among black men is not related to immigration.  The authors claim that for black men, a 10 percent immigration induced increase in supply of a particular labor pool skill group appeared to cause a nearly 1 percentage-point rise in incarceration rates.  And this was written by George Borjas, a well known anti-immigrant fanatic (who is also an immigrant himself, and he hates irony to boot). So even a well-known anti-immigrant fanatic concludes that immigration has a miniscule effect on crime.

The actual facts don’t support Greenfield’s claims.

People Using Rubenstein's Bull Shit

This is how it works.  The Center for Immigration Studies makes a bullshit report [sic] pretending to get data from a legitimate source but misstating the fact.  Then a yahoo like Edwin Rubenstein cites the CIS report as fact in one of his bullshit reports [sic].  Then people can cite Rubenstein's reports and pretend it's fact.  The only way to check the actual data is to carefully analyze Rubenstein's claims and carefully analyze his sources.  It takes a lot of work so most people don't challenge it.

Someone named Jeff Stewart writes a column dated April 16, 2014 available exclusively on the VDare website entitled “Tax Day: Americans Pay—Illegal Aliens Get Fraudulent Refunds”.  The article claims that illegal aliens fraudulently receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit (“EITC”) is widespread and, in fact, that a lot of “thieving” is perpetrated by illegal aliens with respect to the EITC.  Stewart claims that 40 percent of illegal aliens use the program (i.e. EITC).  While Stewart provides no evidence of his own to support these claims, he does link to other reports.

One of the reports that Stewart links to is a Center for Immigration Studies (“CIS”) report dated April 2011 entitled “Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children”.  This link appears after the claim that illegal aliens do “much of the thieving” with respect to the EITC.  But the link doesn’t provide any support for that claim at all.  A section of this report includes a graph showing that a certain percentage of households are “eligible” for the EITC.  A figure is given for native households (29%), all immigrant households (44%) and Hispanic immigrant households (59%). 

A note indicates that this graph does not measure the use of EITC.  It only measures eligibility. The source of the information comes from the 2009 Census Bureau Current Population Survey.  So basically, Stewart’s first link does not support his claim that illegal aliens are “doing much of the thieving”.  His link doesn’t address illegal aliens’ use of EITC at all.

Stewart’s next link is a 2001 (not a typo) report from Steven Camarota of CIS.  Stewart claims that Camarota found [sic] that 40 percent of illegal aliens use the EITC.

This report from Camarota actually claims that 49% of Mexican immigrants are eligible to receive the EITC. It doesn’t even address the immigration status of the people.  The estimate is taken from the 2000 [sic] Census. The Census estimated use of the program by income and number of dependents in the household. The Census does not ask for immigration status and the fact that many Mexican immigrants are illegal aliens and therefore not eligible for the EITC was not taken into consideration in calculating the estimate.  There is no evidence in Stewart’s link to support his claim that 40% of illegal aliens use the EITC.

A third link that Stewart provides is associated with his claim that other analysts [sic] have found “rampant” abuse of the EITC by illegal aliens.  The link he provides is to Edwin Rubenstein’s 2009 article entitled “The EITC and Illegal Aliens”.  Rubeinstein claims that illegal aliens are among the chief beneficiaries of the EITC.  Like Rubeinstein’s subsequent report and a 2004 article on the subject, Rubenstein’s report falls short of substantiating Rubeinstein’s and Stewart’s claims.  Rubeinstein’s primary support for this is the 2001 Camarota report previously mentioned.

So at the end of the day, Jeff Stewart has provided absolutely no evidence to support his claims about the use of EITC by illegal aliens.

Other more reputable analysts argue that the majority of EITC overpayments are NOT a result of fraud on behalf of illegal aliens.

According to a February, 2011, report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), more improper payments seem to be a result of questionable child eligibility than the use of fraudulent social security numbers by illegal aliens. A recommendation to ensure that individuals have a valid Social Security Number is estimated by the TIGTA report to save only $1.1 billion over five years.  Another recommendation to ensure that taxpayers comply with the law governing child eligibility is estimated to save $5.6 billion.

A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains that EITC errors occur primarily because of the complexity of the rules surrounding the credit.  Most of the errors are mistakes, not fraud. EITC overpayments sometimes can result from the complexity of the EITC.  One example is provided involves divorced parents both claiming the same child as a dependent to get the EITC.