Actual Facts About Immigrants

Yes, I know Vance's lies during the vice presidential debate were many, and countering them with facts does little to no good with people who will vote for the Trump/Vance ticket anyway.

But the ones about how many undocumented ("illegal") immigrants there are in the U.S and how the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, particularly were admitted by use of a phone app that Kamala Harris was responsible for need to be addressed.

I've seen many various tweets and BlueSky posts on these topics, but a Star Tribune article gave the essentials.

The vice president (big shock!) does not decide who can enter the country. And as Tim Walz said in the debate, the laws that govern the Temporary Protected Status used for the Haitian people began a long time ago, first in 1952, updated in 1996. The specific "One Phone App" that Vance seems to hate lets people who are still outside the U.S. schedule an appointment before they arrive at a point of entry. It was initiated in 2020... when Trump was president, and is administered by Customs and Border Protection (under Homeland Security). The Strib says, "it was expanded" under Biden, but it's not clear in what way.

As far as the total number of undocumented people goes, we know the Right and Trump in particular make up numbers about everything to please themselves. In this case, their current favorite number is 20–25 million "illegals." The Strib says the best estimate is 11 million unauthorized immigrants, and of those 79% arrived before 2010. That estimate is from a Homeland Security report.

Multiplying 79% by 11 million means only 2.3 million people are still here who arrived since 2010. And of that smaller group... as with undocumented people generally, I'd be willing to bet a large percent overstayed their visa or other way of entering legally as a student or tourist, rather than crossing at the southern border in the way Republican fever dreams imagine.

The other 79% who've been here longer likely have built lives in their U.S. communities, have jobs and families, may be married to citizens or permanent residents, and like anyone undocumented who is working under a name other than their own, they are paying Social Security contributions they will definitely never get back and helping to keep that system funded for today's retirees. It's a great "system" we've got here.

Of course Vance and Trump's claim that undocumented immigrants cause our country's housing shortage and drive up prices is absurd, and no one should have to answer it at face value. It has been shown that their plan to deport undocumented people will drive up housing prices because a large percentage of the workers who build housing are undocumented, so deportation will likely increase the cost of labor for new building (at least, according to the usual laws of economics). 

And it is also projected that mass deportation will drive down GDP generally (as well as put us into a police state...but la la la, who seems to care about that, right?).

And all of this because these cravens want to use immigration as a fear issue to get elected. Whether it's the general issue of "open borders," supposed caravans at the border, thugs with imaginary guns and fentanyl, or vulnerable Haitians in Springfield*, they'll say anything if they think it helps their chances.
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* None of this even touches on the question of whether there really even is the huge number of Haitian temporary residents in Springfield that many have said, including the authorities in Springfield. 

This BlueSky thread by a user called Ellie Likes Data from mid-September questioned that reality thoroughly. She says the most recent Census Bureau's American Community Survey (July 2023) reports there are 5,264. The school district says there were 7,415 at the start of school this year... and that they had 7,716 in 2019 — so that's a decrease. The ACS number only includes people born in Haiti, so it makes sense the school system's numbers might be higher, since they could be including young children of Haitian parents. (Springfield began recruiting Haitians to its workforce about 10 years ago.)

The city of Springfield says on its website that there are 12,000–15,000 total immigrants in Clark County — from all possible countries, in the entire county of 136,000 people. That gives the county a 9–11% foreign-born population, vs. the U.S. average of 14.3%.

Ellie called on a number of investigative journalists in the thread to do a FOIA request on Clark County government for records because things are being reported that don't seem to jibe with reality. I don't know the answer to this, but I sure wish someone would figure out whether this racist, xenophobic nothing-burger is a nothing-burger squared.