Resetting the record straight - distorted information in the Urban Institute's report 'Immigrants: Setting the Record Straight' by Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel - Editorial

National Review, August 29, 1994

ONE SHOULD always be a bit skeptical of a partisan tract claiming to be "setting the record straight." This skepticism is particularly warranted in the case of the Urban Institute's new study Immigration and Immigrants: Setting the Record Straight, by Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel, which claims that "the economic effects of immigration are largely positive." A careful look at this proimmigration manifesto is likely to make one feel sorry for the poor data that had been mercilessly tortured to get them to tell the story the authors wanted to hear.

Many of the claims in the report are, at best, misleading. For example, the report concludes that "the education and income level of recent legal immigrants remained high through the 1980s and did not decline, according to the U.S. Census" (italics added). This finding will be surprising to those Americans who remember the questions on the Census form they filled out four years ago, or to the legions of demographers, social scientists, and journalists who rely on Census data in their daily work. For the Census data provide no information whatsoever on the legal status of persons residing in the United States.

So how does the Urban Institute reach its conclusion? After all, one of its own charts indicates that 41 per cent of all recent immigrants are high-school dropouts, as compared to 23 per cent of natives. To make immigrants look better than natives, the Urban Institute tosses the bad apples out of the foreign-born population. Among the foreign-born persons who are not considered "legal immigrants" are those who came from refugee-sending countries (presumably because refugees are admitted under a separate set of statutes from other legal immigrants). The report also counts the millions who came from Mexico and Central America as presumptively illegal. By throwing out Mexicans as illegals, however, the Urban Institute is also throwing out the largest group of legal immigrants. Future unscrupulous scholars would do well to remember this methodological breakthrough.

The study also concludes that "annual taxes paid by immigrants to all levels of government more than offset the costs of services received, generating a net annual surplus of $25 billion to $30 billion." The calculation essentially compares the taxes that immigrants pay with the costs of providing schooling and welfare programs to the immigrant population. This comparison is fundamentally flawed for a very simple reason: immigrants increase the costs of many other government programs, including roads, parks, and even national defense (look at the increasing role that race and ethnicity play in the framing of U.S. foreign policy). As George Borjas pointed out in an NR article (Dec. 13, 1993), the $30-billion surplus would quickly turn into a $16-billion burden if immigrants were assigned their fair share of the cost of all government programs.

But the Urban Institute manifesto is of some use. It gives away the new fallback position of pro-immigration forces: If it weren't for those refugees and illegals, we would not have an immigration problem. Case not proven.