The facts
Every claim, answered
No claim is softened before it is answered. Each links to the government report, peer-reviewed study or court record the number came from, so you can check it and use it.
- 01
The claim
Undocumented immigrants drive crime.
They are convicted and incarcerated at consistently lower rates than people born in the United States — and have been for 150 years.
37%fewer convictions than US-born Americans
Read the evidence → - 02
The claim
They don't pay taxes.
Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes in one year — including $34 billion into Social Security, Medicare and unemployment programs they are legally barred from ever collecting from.
$96.7Bpaid in taxes in a single year
Read the evidence → - 03
The claim
They come here to live off welfare.
Undocumented immigrants are barred by federal law from SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP and the ACA marketplace — they cannot even buy unsubsidized insurance on the exchange.
$0in federal benefits they are allowed to claim
Read the evidence → - 04
The claim
They're taking American jobs and driving down wages.
The National Academies reviewed the entire body of research and found little evidence that immigration meaningfully affects the employment of native-born workers, and a very small wage effect over the long run.
13.7%of construction workers — jobs that go unfilled without them
Read the evidence → - 05
The claim
They're taking our housing and driving up rents.
More than a third of the country's roofers, drywall installers, masons and plasterers are undocumented. They are not competing for the housing supply — they are the housing supply.
1 in 3roofers and drywall installers — they build the housing
Read the evidence → - 06
The claim
They're bringing the drugs across the border.
US citizens make up around 80 to 89 percent of everyone convicted of federal fentanyl trafficking, and the drug comes through legal ports of entry, not between them.
89%of convicted fentanyl traffickers are US citizens
Read the evidence → - 07
The claim
Why don't they just get in line and come legally?
For most undocumented people there is no line to get into. Congress caps green cards at numbers that have not matched demand in decades, and no visa category exists for the majority of them at any wait length.
226,000green cards a year for the entire world
Read the evidence → - 08
The claim
"Illegal is illegal" — they're criminals by definition.
Being in the United States without status is a civil violation, not a crime. And a large share of undocumented people never crossed a border unlawfully at all — they arrived on a valid visa and stayed.
Civilviolation, not a criminal one
Read the evidence → - 09
The claim
They're voting illegally in our elections.
They cannot vote, and effectively none do. They fund the government at $96.7 billion a year and get no say in it — which is the exact grievance this country was founded on.
0.0001%of 23.5m votes were suspected noncitizen votes — they cannot vote at all
Read the evidence → - 10
The claim
My great-grandparents came legally. They should too.
For most of the era people are picturing, there was almost no law to break. Ellis Island turned away about 2 percent of arrivals. Your ancestors didn't follow the rule you're asking for — the rule didn't exist yet.
~2%of arrivals were turned away at Ellis Island — there was no line to skip
Read the evidence → - 11
The claim
They cost taxpayers $150 billion a year.
That figure comes from one advocacy group and gets there by counting the schooling of US-citizen children as a cost of illegal immigration, then crediting those same citizens' taxes to somebody else.
5.4MUS-citizen children counted as a cost of illegal immigration in that figure
Read the evidence → - 12
The claim
Deporting more people makes communities safer.
It was tested. Secure Communities checked the immigration status of everyone local police arrested, across more than 3,000 counties, and produced no observable effect on crime.
0measurable effect on crime from checking every arrestee's status
Read the evidence → - 13
The claim
ICE only goes after criminals.
Seven in ten people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction, and 92 percent of this fiscal year's growth in detention came from people with no criminal charge at all.
70.6%of people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction
Read the evidence → - 14
The claim
They don't assimilate or learn English.
Their children speak English, and their grandchildren mostly speak only English. Meanwhile adult English classes run waiting lists — the demand outruns the seats, not the other way around.
2ndgeneration speaks English proficiently; the third is English-monolingual
Read the evidence →