July 17, 2009
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What FactCheck.org Actually has to say about illegal immigrants
It’s amazing how the right wing can turn an article used to REFUTE bogus claims about illegal immigration into support for their positions. It’s important to actually take the time to read what FactCheck.org ACTUALLY has to say about illegal immigration. Here’s the article:
Notice. This article is in response to a chain letter that villifies illegal immigrants using bogus statistics and unsourced claims. FactCheck.org goes through them one by one and shows how they are either false, misleading, or poorly sourced. FactCheck.org tries to be honest so when there is some truth to a claim it does verify it. But you can’t read the article honestly without getting the sense that the persons originally making the claims in the chain email are basically MAKING STUFF UP.And yet now we see emails and blog posts, repeating the claims of the original chain letter with slight alterations and saying that FactCheck.org backs them up. Give me a BREAK.Let me give you some examples.Right wing pundits are saying FactCheck backs the claim that “30% of all Federal Prison Inmates are Illegal Aliens”This is what FactCheck.org ACTUALLY SAID:“Both of these claims can be traced back to that same April 1, 2006,episode of “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on CNN, in the same segment, with the same correspondent, Christine Romans. But the e-mail misrepresents what Romans said. She gave figures for people who are “not U.S. citizens,” a category that would include legal residents as well as “illegal aliens.”
Romans said that “according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 30 percent of federal prisoners are not U.S. citizens,” adding that “most are thought to be illegal aliens.” Actually, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not keep figures on illegal immigrants. What solid numbers we can find point to a much smaller figure. A Department of Justice report from 2003 found that only 1.6 percent of the state and federal prison populations was under Immigration and Customs Enforcement jurisdiction, and thus known to be illegal immigrants. Half of these prisoners were detained only because they were here illegally, not for other crimes.”Similarly the claim that “$200 billion a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the Illegal aliens” is supposedly supported by FactCheck.org.
Here’s what Factcheck.org SAID:
“Again, this is from that same April 1, 2006, Lou Dobbs episode. On the show, Dobbs said that “estimates by the most authoritative and recent study put the suppressed wages at $200 billion a year, as a result of immigration, both legal and illegal.” The e-mail continues its practice of ignoring any distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
We couldn’t find any study that supported Dobb’s figure. ”
And it’s ALL like this. Over and over again. Bullshit distortions that don’t even make any sense.I urge you to read the whole FactCheck article and learn the ACTUAL FACTS. Don’t just take what someone posts on the internet for truth.There might BE a legitimate argument to make against illegal immigration. But this isn’t it. This is dishonest propaganda designed to manipulate your opinions. Whoever you are getting it from is either a LIAR or is getting their information from LIARS.DON’T LISTEN TO THEM!
Comments (46)
I’m amazed at what both sides do to prove their points of view.
I can’t watch Lou Dobbs’ show. He connects EVERYthing to “illegal aliens”. It would be an amzing thing to watch if it weren’t so exasperating.
I got blocked from her site for pointing this out… and trying to have an adult conversation with her.
I’m all for immigration–as long as it’s legal. Facts are skewed on both sides, however it does not change the fact that this is serious issue that continues to be ignored by Washington. when it is adressed it is done so contrary to the will of the people., and contrary to laws
@Lithium98 - haha, looks like so was I! At first I wrote a long and detailed comment in response to the picture she posted, but then comments were disabled on that. Then I posted this article and a short comment on her most recent blog entry. She replied suggesting that I didn’t read the article and then banned me before I could reply. Oh well.
In any case I’m sure she’s not the only one posting this or things like it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s getting it directly from some other source. I just wish things like this wouldn’t get so much attention. I usually don’t like writing posts in direct response to someone else’s post. But in this case I felt it was a good idea to post something to refute what she is saying so that the truth is at least out there. Still I didn’t mention the blog in question because I’m not interested in getting into a fight with anyone in particular.
@nephyo - I’m very tempted to post the comments that were on the picture. I can fish them out of my browsers cache, but it’s almost too much trouble. I’m with you on this, there are far too many people who just ignorantly post things like that which helps promote false information. The main reason I had a problem with it was because her “about me” section said she was here to give us information and truth, through an economist’s point of view.
@ShamelesslyRed - We can discuss illegal immigration if you’d like. I personally have no particular beef with how Washington has handled illegal immigration nor do I see it as a particular big problem. Then again that’s my opinion and we can certainly discuss the particulars. However, that’s not the point of this post.
The purpose of this entry was to bring to light a single particularly egregious example of a failure to even attempt to make the most basic effort towards honest presentation of the facts. In every public debate there are some distortions made on both sides, especially by the politicians and by the most extreme advocates. Bad rounding and statistics manipulation is to be expected. And you’re welcome to bring up and refute any left wing distortions you find reprehensible.
This case is something more though. It’s not just a couple of numerical twists. It’s a blatant attempt at manipulation that doesn’t even give its readers enough credit to assume they will actually follow the link and read the article. The person is trying to discredit a legitimate fact checking organization or simply trying to piggy bag their finding on its back, in effect obtaining legitimacy on FactCheck.org’s good name. It’s probably trying to do both.
I find that particularly deplorable. And I’m sure Factcheck.org would not be particularly happy with it either.
You really can’t look at chain letters as fact in most cases.
Did you know that 74.5% of statistics are made up on the spot?
I am so glad you wrote this response because I was about to write one myself. I made a simple comment. I can’t remember the exact comment because she deleted it and said she wasn’t going to spend time on it.
All I said was that just looking at the statistics I could see how they could be misleading. One issue is with the claim that illegals do not pay taxes. They may not pay income tax but they pay taxes on everything they buy. Every American pays taxes other than their income taxes. We are taxed to death. So the claim that illegal immigrants are not paying taxes but are receiving all of these benefits is bogus. I wasn’t attacker her for posting it. I was simply making an observation and the comment got deleted.
Here is the problem with this country. No one is listening to anyone else. So serious issues like war, taxes, health care, abortion and dealing with illegal immigrants never get solved because people have pre-existing thoughts on the issues that do not work toward a solution. Deleting anyone who opposes your thoughts suggest you are not open to what others say. My comment was pretty innocent. I simply noted that the statistics may not be reliable.
Anyway, thanks for posting this for all of us that were blocked and deleted.
And another thought, don’t put “Enlightenment” in your user name if you are going to delete comments that are just pointing out basic issues with what you are linking. Common sense suggested there was a problem with the statistics.
hear, hear
I haven’t come across this Dobbs recapitulation before, but I’m sure I will at some point, and I thank you for pre-debunking it.
@Lithium98 - @nephyo - @TheTheologiansCafe - What site is this that started the whole hubbub in the first place?
@TheTheologiansCafe - I think she deleted them all, period.
If they experienced what I’ve endured, in fear of losing one of my loved ones for this, they’d know.
How incredibly ridiculous. Thank you for pointing out the truth.
precisely. There needs to be a way for people to immigrate legally without hysterical reactions.
@XxRainyxMondayxX - My science teacher loves to use that. Students like me who have had him more than once learn to dispute the made up statistic about made up statistics. It’s amazing.
@Lithium98 - Did Xanga make it so that if you’re blocked, you can’t see the site at all? Because it used to be that you just couldn’t comment or contact the person. But I made my response (which actually never mentioned the site and only talked about flaws in the ideas behind the post…like what constitutes hypocrisy and what infringes on sovereignty) and 10 minutes later, I’m getting messages that Xanga could not find what I was looking for or could not go through with posting my comment that had stuff that I left out in my original comment. Does this mean that I’m blocked or does this mean that she actually took it down?
@Lithium98 - Oh nevermind, I went back to copy my response to make a post out of it and noticed that my comment is no longer on the page when I hit the back button to get to the page. I figure I’m blocked for being logical.
I wonder how long it’ll take for someone to comment on how FactCheck.org is biased or has an agenda. I hear people say that about Snopes (a website similar to FactCheck) whenever people use Snopes to provide proof that the original person’s chain letter is full of non-truths.
@rafi09 - Yeah, you got blocked with the rest of us. I think she just got her 15 minutes of Xanga fame.
Wow, I love how I never even got a warning that she didn’t want to deal with my comment.
@Rob_of_the_Sky - It probably won’t be too long. Some people don’t actually understand what biased means. If it disagrees with them or offers proof that they are completely wrong, then it is biased toward whatever stance is opposite of their stance. Plus, some people are far too extreme to see neutrality.
@TheTheologiansCafe - Completely true. Unfortunately, this truth reaches out toward our politicians, which is why it takes forever for policies that help people to be get through. Also, why make a post about something that is controversial public if you don’t want to debate?
“It’s amazing how the right wing can turn an article used to REFUTE bogus claims about illegal immigration into support for their positions.”
And I’ve seen the left wing do the same thing. It’s not a left/right thing, but a people thing.
Stateestics. I don’t need not fkin, stateestics. It’s all coummunista propoganda.
@TheTheologiansCafe - I replied to your response and thought the questions you posited were very reasonable and deserved a answer..I think the entire post was deleted Dan… John
@TheTheologiansCafe - I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this mad, and am shocked somebody just deleted your comment that way. Great comment here though, and your point about people not listening to each other is especially true.
I didn’t see the original post that led to this, but thought you raised some excellent points. Very well done!
I could care less about the rest of these facts, and people on both sides who toss them back and forth are ignoring the key issue – it isn’t about immigration, it is about ILLEGAL immigration, which is by the very definition *illegal.* This nation was founded on immigrants – great, let ‘em in. But they have to come through the gate, and let us know they’re here, according to our laws. Pretty simple stuff, really. The rest – on both sides – has turned into a muddy tangled mess because people forgot the basics.
She has a blogspot account apparently…I noticed it when I was trying to see if I could get my comment from my history. I went to it, and the article is on there word for word. She also has to approve comments so I don’t think there will be debate on their either.
This is sad because so many people are going to be misled since she won’t even let us give the link to the article so others can read it on her blog. Does anyone have a blogspot who can post a response article so that way you can attempt to start a debate? I don’t mean flaming her, I just mean trying to get the readers to realize that they can’t rely on her statistics. I normally wouldn’t ask someone to do this, but I’m rather saddened by knowing that she’s going to mislead many people and many of them will be future voters.
maybe if americans made it easier for poor people to immigrate…
the prices have gone way up, more than most can afford. the test is relatively difficult, especially for most current citizens. that’s why they HAVE to come illegally.
@radicalramblings - Yeah, but there are flaws in the immigration process (many illegal immigrants could not get a Visa from their country simply because their government is far too controlling or they can’t afford any fees that may go along with paperwork since this is a legal process) and she won’t even let us post a response about possible solutions that would ensure that more people would come over legally. In fact, that’s all that my response focused on. Put aside the statistics part, the post still focuses on why the original article should not be completely relied upon. That’s what’s important…people need to realize that they need to do their own research instead of just listening to her and she’s not letting us give research so that those people can view more than one side.
Numbers really lose perspective at some point. If it is billions of any number thats a lot of money. If 20% of the prison population are not american citizens , that is a lot of people . The government has been playing this “really big number game” and so has the media and it takes away from anything being believable. Whether it is right wing or left wing these stats keep pointing to numbers and workers, who are not the issue or the causation but a symptom.
If the government, media, factcheck and all the rest can keep you focused on the symptom and never speak of causation they divide and conquer and the whole discussion is bs.
People do not migrate to a area of no employment. Opportunity draws people. After the last pardon, IRCA was enacted in 1986, SSA verification of ss numbers became available by telephone in 1992. Later on no match letters started where the SSA would send the employer written notification that a employees ssn did not match, requiring the employer to send the employee to the ssa to get it straightened out to be eligible to continue to work.The point: Employers are required by law to hire people eligible to work. Yet the law and the law enforcement has been a sham. Why?
For employers who fail to properly complete, retain, or make I-9 Forms available for inspection, fines range from $100 to $1,100 per individual I-9.
For employers who knowingly hire or knowingly continue to employ unauthorized workers, civil penalties range from $250 to $11,000 per violation.
For employers engaging in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers, criminal penalties can be as much as $3,000 per unauthorized employee and/or six (6) months of imprisonment.
Bottom line that is chump change considering the cost savings of hiring someone below the prevailing wage. It is easier to pay the fine than pay a legal employee the prevailing rate and merely a cost of doing business.
Now where do costs come in? Glad you asked as these people do pay taxes, but to whom? I used a comparison with Dan earlier. Growing up farmers used to bring in migrant labor from Puerto Rico and pay forthem to come, the food and shelter on the farm while they were here and to go back home at the end of the season. It cost the community very little and considering the farmers taxes, it cost the community nothing fo them to come here and was a benefit to the community/farmer.
Todays factory owner has a different pattern though.They construct a factory in the United States in a city or town. Then they will hire a unqualified worker at a position, generally at a rate of pay below the prevailing rate. Once hired the worker takes residence in the community and if they have a family then they utilize the public school system. But since they are being paid a rate of pay lower than a eligible local would be paid, then this potentially places a double stress on the communities infrastructure. The legal resident and taxpayer is absorbing the impact of the cost of public schools,housing, healthcare, social services,etc. because the new employee may very well be under the poverty level and eligble for assistance.
Now the new worker becomes the object of ire or the focus of the economic impact, but the real focus is the impact created because of the action of the employer.. I have first hand knowledge of the practice and the intentional nature of it. Keep the focus on the worker and they will divide and conquer by keeping the smokescreen going.
I am not implying that there is no culpability for the employee, I am implying the causation is the employers willful violation of US law creating the situation and there is a fiscal impact in each communitywhere things like this occur.
@GodlessLiberal - i think it’s from post/user:
http://public-enlightenment.xanga.com/707480827/is-mexico-being-hypocritical-about-illegal-immigration/
haha i was curious, too, so i went looking.
@sophia - no, that is a replacement post. The entire post is gone. Even if the comments were deleted both Dans and my sites name would in the eprops section.
@ProvokingThought - oh. correct person though, right? haha i was close.
@sophia - yep. couldn’t have been closer!
@AlterEgo909 - absolutely true. I really can’t stand chain letters. But these political ones seem to be popping up more and more lately and are becoming more and more sophisicated in their deception. Luckily we have sites like FactCheck.org that go through them.
@XxRainyxMondayxX - Really? I thought it was 87.6%?
@ModernBunny - I’ve never even seen Lou Dobbs. But most punditry shows are largely useless. Illegal Aliens are a very convenient scapegoat though for a lot of people.
I don’t have any strong legal opinion on illegal immigration or
immigration reform. But what shocks me over and over is conservative
Christians leading the charge against the livelihoods of illegal
aliens. The Christian scriptures are explicitly clear on this: “Love the illegal alien as yourself and treat them like a citizen… I am the LORD your G-D.”
@soccerdadforlife - I don’t doubt you. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have included that line as this was not meant to be about one side or another but about a particular set of examples that just happen to be from the Right. But at the time I wrote this, I was rather annoyed.
However, just going from my own experience I can’t think of any left wing example that is as obviously a grotesque deception in quite the same manner as I am pointing out above. I can think of two left wing tactics that are a bit similar though.
1. Occassionaly I’ll see a left wing post on HuffingtonPost or a component of left wing essay that sources FoxNews as if to say “See? Even FoxNews supports the obvious truth of blah blah blah”. However, these examples are more honest in that they actually show the video of what was said by said FoxNews commentator and they quote them verbatim. They often aren’t attempting to pretend that the FoxNews commentator supports their position but rather only that the FoxNews commentator acknowledges the same facts. That I think is fair ground. The difference here is that the writer is trying to say that FactCheck actually AGREES with them and puts words in FactCheck’s mouth that they never said or even anything close to.
2. The most ridiculous left wing conspiracy people sometimes quote official lines when trying to prove whatever nonsensical conspiracy they are trying to prove. Usually the quote they use, taken far out of context says nothing of the sort of what the theorist propose and yet they use it as evidence that 9/11 was a hoax and similar crazy stuff. Yeah that I think is screwed up but it’s still vastly different from this. Again, they sitll quoted the person accurately. They were trying to show that said official accidentally let something slip, not that they were advocating along the same lines that they were advocating.
Honestly I don’t even consider conspiracy theorests in #2 to really be a part of the left. Until they have real evidence they are as crazy in my book as the “Obama is the Antichrist” crowd on the right.
But this is just different. It’s an attempt to try to appear serious and official using the name of a very serious and respectable website. I find that particularly loathsome. I’ve seen things like it a couple of times before, in fact once before with FactCheck.org again being the target, but it was always from the Right.
If there are Left Wing or Centrist examples of a similar nature, please post about them, so we can discuss them and debunk them too. Because NOBODY should do shit like this. Especially not targeting a site that bends over backwards to be as neutral as possible like FactCheck.org does. It’s fundamentally wrong.
@soccerdadforlife - right on!
I second soccerdad and shamelesslyred on this matter…
“DON’T LISTEN TO THEM!” DON’T WORRY, I WON’T!!! lol
@sophia - yeah, it’s a replacement post. It’s almost exactly like the original though. The only changes I saw (yay for not having my IP address blocked, just my username) were that she took off FactCheck as a source and she added a url at the bottom, which I assume is her new official source. Everything else appears to be the same, including the statistics that FactCheck debunked.
@nephyo - I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your point at first. I re-read the article and found out that you were only talking about articles that distort articles from factcheck.org. I thought that you were talking about distortions of facts generally. I can think of Michael Moore’s hit-pieces and Obama’s assertions that 90% of guns used in crimes in Mexico came from the U.S. (factcheck had an expose on the latter).
@buckeyegirl31 - I agree. I think both sides exaggerate and lie to prove their points.
Wow, this post got popular. ^.^
Meh, I’m not much for pundits either, but I used to be an Olbermann fangirl.
But after a while he was just exaggerating and getting way too excited even for me.
@TheTheologiansCafe - I also made a comment on her website and she deleted it, or blocked me. For some reason, I cannot view her website anymore. She may have taken down the post because of all of the commotion she has stirred. Or she just doesn’t want to hear what I have to say.
On her blog, I was wondering why every comment was in support of her views on the issue. I could not find one person disputing her, and now I know why.
I’m so happy someone put up a logical article to finally dispute her crazy statistics. Thank you.
@ModernBunny - yeah I’m not a fan of progressive pundits either. They are turning serious subjects into entertainment to make money for the companies they work for. That’s why they exist and their bias is going to be bound by the interests of whatever companies they are subservient to.
Progressive pundits are better by in large in terms of telling the truth and owning up to their mistakes than conservative pundits from my observation. And I think sometimes the things that Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow say are really important. They give a perspective not seen elsewhere on television except on comedy shows and that’s really IMPORTANT. Some of the early segments by Olbermann I absolutely loved and I thought he was dead on. Other times though I can see where his perspective is being informed by the need to be popular and having high ratings and at that times I really can’t see that huge of a difference between him and the conservatives who do the same thing.
Really, I’m find with punditry so long as it is backed by REAL reporting and not based on blatant lies. It’s just that what should really be important is the reporting itself. The facts on which people formulate their opinion. Pundits in a sense are trying to present information to get people to think like they do. I want people to have the facts to formulate their own opinions.
Then again I probably do what can only be called blogging punditry on this blog too so maybe I’m not one to talk.