White Supremacists' Distortion of Immigration

¡Hola! Everybody...
As usual, the white supremacist "chatter tank," FAIR, spews put yet another report riddled with methodological errors. This is nothing new, I've written previously about the "studies" churned by FAIR, its sister organization CIS, and other like-minded organizations. Most of these documented hate groups are basically cover for white racism. They get plenty of airplay on the mainstream media, hence lending these extremist hate groups a veneer of respectability. If you ever find yourself debating an anti-immigrant goober from Hooterville, chances are that he or she will sooner or later cite FAIR, CIS, or Vdare propaganda.
I call this crap, "bigotry dressed as research."

Here, another FAIR "study" gets taken apart... You be the judge.

FAIR's Distorted Fiscal Snapshot of Unauthorized Immigrants

New Report Ignores Economic Contributions of Unauthorized Workers and Consumers; Views the Education of Their U.S.-Citizen Children as Nothing More Than a "Cost"

Released by the Immigration Policy Center on Tuesday, Jul 06, 2010

Washington D.C. - Today, Fox News is reporting on data provided to them by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) which amounts to a highly misleading fiscal snapshot of the costs allegedly imposed on U.S. taxpayers by unauthorized immigrants. However, in its rush to portray unauthorized immigrants as nothing more than a drain on the public treasury, FAIR completely discounts the economic contributions of unauthorized workers and consumers. Moreover, FAIR inflates their cost estimate by indiscriminately lumping together native-born, U.S.-citizen children with their unauthorized parents.

FAIR's report suffers from three fatal flaws:

• The report notes that the single biggest "expense" it attributes to unauthorized immigrants is the education of their children, yet most of these children are native-born, U.S. citizens who will grow up to be tax-paying adults. It is disingenuous to count the cost of investing in the education of these children, so that they will earn higher incomes and pay more in taxes when they are adults, as if it were nothing more than a cost incurred by their parents.
  
• The report fails to account for the purchasing power of unauthorized consumers, which supports U.S. businesses and U.S. jobs.
  
• The report ignores the value added to the U.S. economy by unauthorized workers, particularly in the service sector.

In contrast to FAIR's report, the Perryman Group estimated that if all unauthorized workers and consumers were somehow removed from the U.S. economy, the United States would lose $552 billion in total economic activity ("expenditures"), $245 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 2.8 million jobs.

FAIR's data is meant only to reinforce their vision of "attrition through enforcement." It is not rooted in an effort to move the immigration debate forward. The public and the President have made it clear that deporting 11-12 million immigrants isn't reasonable or feasible. Therefore, passing comprehensive immigration reform - which would yield a cumulative $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years - is the only sound economic decision the United States can make.

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