Infographic: People Overestimate How Many Immigrants Live in Their Country

Americans tell pollsters immigrants make up about a third of the population. In reality, it's less than half that much.

(Graph: OurWorldinData.org/migration | CC BY; Visual Capitalist)

Comments

[Vernon Depner]

But since this is Reason, we have no idea how they're defining "immigrants".

[mad.casual]

Arguably worse- Data Source: International Organization for Migration (2022)

"If we have to convince people around the world not to believe their lying eyes, that's their fault, not ours."

[diver64]

I believe they are lumping illegal and legal into one tranche. The problem isn't legal immigration, it's the estimated 30 Million illegals entering the country where a large proportion have no intention of assimilating not only to our culture but also language resulting in Dearbornistan and Little Mogadishu in Minneapolis.

[BYODB]

But those are very difficult, if not impossible, to count so we simply won't and we'll pull a number out of our ass instead.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Yes this is completely useless information. Are we talking about undocumented immigrants? Legal immigrants? First generation immigrants? Second generation immigrants? Most of us are descendents of immigrants. Where are we drawing the line?

[mad.casual]

They're a bunch of bigots, America is at *least* 80-90% immigrant colonizers.

[Rossami]

Their definition is right in the image (though admittedly in very small black print that's hard to read at default resolution).

"Note: Immigrants are defined here as people who reside in a country other than where they were born."

So, yes, they do combine both legal and illegal immigrants but apparently they did so both in the poll and in the statistics.

[Vernon Depner]

How would they know how many illegal immigrants there are?

[Rossami]

Precisely? You can't. Pretty good estimate (that is, close enough that your answer to the question above is likely only off by a percent or two)? Not that hard.

Analysts and politicans on both sides do make similar estimates all the time. And while their policy answers over what to do about it are wildly different, their estimates of the numbers aren't usually that far apart.

[reasonable]

I would have guessed 90%. Now, if the question had been "first generation", I would have guess 10%

[SIV]

I'm not sure how they count. If two immigrant parents have 4 anchor babies is that 2 immigrants or 6? I live in one of the most diverse metropolitan areas of the country. I can look up population by race/ethnicity but that's useless. My county is 1/5-1/4 Hispanic, Asian or mixed race but we're majority Black. That includes a large number of African immigrants. I can go to a Korean-owned international grocery store and hear people wearing traditional dress speaking Khoisan and Bantu click languages and almost all of the "white people" shopping or working there are Hispanic. I'd say most of the Africans 0-3 generations removed from the Dark Continent are Hamitic people from the Horn and, while they're African-Americans in the truest sense they aren't "Black".

[Medulla Oblongata]

Remember when people thought that far more people died from COVID than actually did.

“Scottish people think COVID-19 has killed 10% of the U.K. population,” said Toby Young. “The British public believe a whopping 7% of the UK population has died from Coronavirus, a number 100 times higher than the recorded-death reality,” reported blog Guido Fawkes.

The true proportion of the British population who have died from Covid-19 is around 0.1%.

[Vernon Depner]

Much less than that, if you subtract those who died "with COVID", and those murdered with Remdesivir and ventilators.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

Again the illustration of the laziness and consequent error is better illustrated by the amazingly horrible statement of Justice Sotomayor

Sotomayor, a liberal, tried during the Friday hearing to emphasize the danger posed by the omicron variant of the virus. She said, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators.”

Facts First: Sotomayor’s claim about children wasn’t even close to accurate. According to federal data at the time Sotomayor spoke, fewer than 5,000 people under the age of 18 were hospitalized in the US with confirmed or suspected cases of Covid-19; the reported number of child hospitalizations was 4,464 on Thursday, the day before the hearing, and was still under 5,000 as of Monday afternoon.

[B G]

In December 2020, a survey showed that 70% of CNN viewers believed that the overall hospitalization rate for those infected with Covid (all ages) was at or above 50%.

Whatever dogmatic silo that people like Sotomayor entrench themselves in were still pushing the idea that vax mandates for pre-teen children was a necessary "safety" precaution before re-opening public schools even after the CDC was publishing reports stating that they estimated that at least 75% of all school-aged children in the US had already been through the full course of the disease at least once, with an estimated asymptomatic rate of around 66% or higher; any question related to why children needed such aggressive "protection" from a virus which mostly produced no actual symptoms (and for which 99.9%+ of symptomatic cases were mild) was something which would get the person asking censored as being "anti-science" and not having an appropriate "regard for the data".

[diver64]

I wouldn't say "murdered" with ventilators. The doctors were trying to treat Covid the best they could and quickly found out ventilators were not it.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Wrong. The elderly patients were executed to make room for the anticipated overwhelming rush of young patients that never happened.

[BYODB]

Alternatively, killing off old people staves off the inevitable insolvency of Medicare/Social Security.

[B G]

The median death age for Covid was above 75. At that point, they've all cost both systems far more than they ever contributed.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I wouldn't say "murdered" with ventilators. The doctors were trying to treat Covid the best they could and quickly found out ventilators were not it.

I don't know about that. There are plenty of anecdotes from nurses at the time talking about how they had to badger elderly people into getting put on vents.

The Branch Covidians were all-in on blocking any kind of data as to how many of these people ended up dying from sepsis because the vents weren't changed out, either incompetently or maliciously.

[mad.casual]

I'm going to tilt my hand here too [tilts hand].

There's an added wrinkle; in the US ventilators in such conditions were and are generally known to be a death sentence, that the patient is never going to recover the ability to breath on their own and you're just prolonging their subsistence until something else gets them. Now, in a somewhat more backwards, socialist healthcare scheme, it's possible that doctors still think smoking is good for your health they were saving elderly people from infectious lung diseases or cytokine storm or whatever by putting them on a ventilator.

[Vernon Depner]

There were other courses of treatment available that had to be suppressed to maintain the Emergency Use Authorizations for the mRNA "vaccines".

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

That is nothing at all compared to Biden's leaning on the stats that produced the insane models and the insane modelers

"[Imperial College epidemiologist Neil] Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. There were fewer than 200 deaths. . . .

In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE.

In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.

In 2009, a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K.

Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay.

So the real scandal is: Why did anyone ever listen to this guy?"

Biden the lazy and poorly educated anti-scientist has pointed his whole life to pure shit like this to justify what he does.
He was a roaring boostre of his Brady Bill but what did it do ?

Study Shows Brady Bill Had No Impact on Gun Homicides
https://www.law.virginia.edu/news/200303/study-shows-brady-bill-had-no-impact-gun-homicides

Neuron for neuron even stupider than Beto O'Rourke

[Medulla Oblongata]

Yeah, I've got that one in my archives too. Along with some other damning things from colleagues of his.

And this (https://www.sph.umn.edu/news/modeling-covid-19-for-minnesota/) telling us how Tim Walz made COVID policy based on an (unvalidated) all-nighter from grad students.

Before Friday, March 20, Marina Kirkeide, who graduated from the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering in 2019, was a School of Public Health part-time research assistant working on HPV transmission for Kulasingam. On a gap year before starting Medical School at the University in fall 2020, Kirkeide also had a second job as a lab tech at St. Paul’s Regions Hospital. That Friday, Kulasingam called her and two other research assistants and asked if anyone was available to “work through the day and night” to get a COVID-19 model to Governor Walz the following Monday. They all jumped at the chance.

“I don’t think a lot of researchers get to work on something over the weekend and have public figures talk about it and make decisions based on it three days later,” says Kirkeide, who had to leave her hospital job to focus solely on modeling. She feels the responsibility of such a big project, too. “[In this situation] you don’t have the time to validate as much as you normally would. You want to get it right the first time. And your work has to be really, really quick.”

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

"This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated," said Biden and many study has shown that to be FALSE. but people were refused medical treatment. And true to lazy form, his crusade to have everyone vaccinated just fizzled . Good goddam Riddance.

[mad.casual]

If you throw in all the intersex people who were dead-named with COVID, it's closer to 7%.

[Mickey Rat]

15% of the country's population being 1st generation immigrants is still a very large slice. In a country of 335 million, that equates to 50 million people, more than 5/6ths of the total population of Italy. The argument that it should be an even larger slice is what?

By the way, this overestimating of demographics isvalso true for ethnic, racial and sexual minorities, which has considerable consequences for judging diversity goals. One reason for this, is overrepresenation of these groups in entertainment and advertising.

[Mickey Rat]

Though the perception of immigrants being a higher percentage, may be because of immigrants being a higher percentage where they are more notable. In 2022, immigrants origin schholchildren were 32% of the school age population.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

WTF does Italy have to do with it? You're just as stupidly guilty of stupid statistics games when you do shit like that.

[Mickey Rat]

Italy has nothing to do with it, except as a comparison that we have imported a population of a mid-size Western country.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

It's the kind of crap people pull to exaggerate their statistics. Use the percentage. That's enough. It's honest.

[MasterThief]

Would it be preferable to list a bunch of states that collectively don't have the same population?

[Stupid Government Tricks]

List the numbers, just like this article does in that picture. Don't try to get cute and scare people. If the raw numbers don't scare people, then they don't want to be scared.

[mad.casual]

Stupid, the disparity your criticizing Mickey for like a goddamned moron is baked into the numbers.

This is statistics 101. If I have 5 people with $100 and 5 people with $0, the average $/person is $10 even though no one actually has $10. If you poll more heavily from the half with $100, it's going to seem like they're out of touch but the number they're out of touch from isn't even real to begin with.

If the International Organization for Migration, which is actually akin to Dr. Mann in that they have an incentive to make the people and numbers look incoherent, polled in the American Southwest, where local immigration numbers are actually closer to 33%, and then average by N. Idaho, Minnesota, Maine, and Martha's Vineyard, where the numbers are lower and, if abiding your own pro-globalist standards/methodology, irrelevant.

This is some sarc-level, "The media is retarded and manipulative on every other issue except this *one* that they happen to agree with me on." stupidity.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

What was exaggerated? He wasn't using statistics, he was using a comparative to illustrate total number. Has nothing to do with statistics.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

It has everything to do with trying to scare people. Most Americans have no idea what EU populations are. They probably think Italy, France, Germany, and Spain all have the same population. It's absolutely meaningless except to scare people. OMG WE'VE GOT AN ENTIRE COUNTRY CROSSING OUR BORDER.

It turns statistics into propaganda. It stoops to their level.

And throwing in 5/6 is just the icing on the cake. Spain is 5/6 the population of Italy. Why not use Spain? The association with Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants makes it even better. Why not 5/7 France? Why not 50% more than Poland? Why not triple the Netherlands?

[mad.casual]

Most Americans have no idea what EU populations are. They probably think Italy, France, Germany, and Spain all have the same population.

So, just to be clear, what you're saying is, you don't think most Americans know this number *and* you don't want Mickey Rat informing them of it. Informing anyone of these numbers is, inherently, a scare tactic.

Exactly how retarded and retarding are you going to get about this?

[Social Justice is neither]

Was it the fraction or the 50 million value given too hard for you to understand? You got what you are demanding plus a comparison to demonstrate the scale for others so quit bitching because you are not the only audience member.

[BYODB]

Yeah, odd for them to bitch when you gave the actual number along with the comparison.

If one is aiming for scare tactics, one would simply omit the real number entirely and start from the premise of 'an entire country is invading'.

If someone is stupid enough to think this is a scare tactic rather than a plain comparison, they are exactly stupid enough to miss the point.

[mad.casual]

Stupid, Italy is a fairly sizable country that most people have heard of. The numbers are similar for France. He could've said 3/4 of the population of Germany or ~8X the population of Denmark.

Point being, if you actually care about people, diversity, and culture rather than global hegemony and cramming more people into the US tax base/social safety net, the number should rather objectively seem too high as it does too low. Moreover, the number is by no means paltry, the US isn't exactly being stingy.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Point being, no American has any real comprehension of what the Italian population is. It's like comparing water usage to Olympic-sized pools, or icebergs to Rhode Island, or rockets to football fields.

Use the goddam numbers. The rest if PR fluff designed to scare people. It's Michael Mann level stupidity. If you like it, you're putting yourself on Michael Mann's level.

[mad.casual]

Point being, no American has any real comprehension of what the Italian population is.

Awful self-indulgingly elitist from a guy who identifies as Stupid.

It's like comparing water usage to Olympic-sized pools, or icebergs to Rhode Island, or rockets to football fields.

Objective and relatable? If he measures things in feet do you get offended by that too?

Use the goddam numbers.

He did, but then again, you self-identify as Stupid.

It's Michael Mann level stupidity. If you like it, you're putting yourself on Michael Mann's level.

Michael Mann (either one) makes projections. Mickey stated fact.

As usual, you aren't really opposing anything even remotely sensible here. Nominally these people are refugees and asylum seekers of their own governments and social mismanagement, are you advocating they continue to be underserved and driven out or their homes? They come to a country that, even it it pauses for 4 yrs., is still notorious for taxing people at home and abroad in order to redistribute wealth as part of the larger global scheme to do the same. Are you advocating the naturalization/assimilation of them into this process?

Otherwise, "Is 50 million too high or too low?" is a fair question and you're just a stupid asshole.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

It's the usual emotive anger when people start pointing out the size of the problem. Also seen when sources explaining the costs are attacked.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Idiot. I said the raw numbers are fine, it's the stupid comparison which is stupid. If you can't see the difference, then the stupid comparison fits you fine. It's alarmism for the sake of alarmism. If you like that, throw in more of your own.

[mad.casual]

It's alarmism for the sake of alarmism.

No one has been alarmed by any of this more than you. No one has made more presumptions on the basis of alarm than you. In any other social situation would be pretty obvious at this point that you're coming off as a self-righteous, raving lunatic (and I'm pretty sure there are others who would affirm that I speak with a bit of authority here).

It's OK for normal people to use comparisons you don't approve of. Especially if they're rightly asking what level of immigration and associated wealth and social restructuring goes along with it. They aren't calling for anyone to be forced out of where they are, they're just trying to gain information and/or an appreciation for the facts that have not been given to them. In a free society, they're allowed to ask those questions no matter how grievous a microaggression worth screeching down you may perceive it to be.

[Rossami]

Sorry, Stupid, but you're wrong on this one. And I'm going to stick with your pools example to demonstrate.

I (and most people) really do have a pretty good intuitive sense for how big an olympic-sized pool is - it is roughly the volume of a 10,000 square foot house. I could also "translate" the volume by saying how long it would take to fill it up with a garden hose (about a month). Those are both a lot easier to visualize than the mere answer in gallons (660,000).

Human brains are not designed to deal well with large (or small) numbers. Our intuitive counting system is one, two, three, four, five, many. Yes, our brains are hard-wired to the number of fingers on our hands. There have been multiple studies in independent fields confirming that basic finding. Big numbers are just noise to most people. Translating those big numbers into more intuitively accessible formats is not "scare tactics" or "PR fluff". It can be a perfectly valid attempt to aid in communication.

Note - like most statistics, it can also be abused to distort rather than aid true understanding but that should be a criticism reserved for a specific abuse, not a blanket criticism of metric translations in general.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

And you're wrong about France, which just proves my point. France has 10 million more people than Italy, Spain 10 million less. Spain would have been 100%, France 5/7.

Thanks for proving what a stupid comparison it is.

[mad.casual]

Without knowing the International Organization for Immigration's own numbers and methods, their numbers could easily be even further off and even more alarmist or propagandized.

But then, you don't give a shit because it's not really about the math or the numbers. It's about the narrative you prefer/accept. More critically, especially to your projections of what you think most Americans do/don't know, the narrative you want other people to accept.

[diver64]

Bro, calm down. It was just a reference to give people a grasp of how large the number is. The poster could just as easily said "larger than the population of Canada" or "the same number as the population of South Korea".

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Yes, all equally useless, all meant only to scare people with comparisons they know nothing of.

[mad.casual]

And with you as their guardian to ensure that they won't be scared of any knowledge they don't currently have no matter how objectively presented.

You're as noble and dishonest as any writer at this magazine.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

Italy is a mggnificent example as Giorgio Meloni has shown that Macron's monstrous tyranny over 10 or 11 African nations has sent immigration skyrocketing.

THIS IS SUPER_EXCELLENT ANALYSIS ( short video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-C8ogD6E8c

[Stupid Government Tricks]

There, that's a good comparison. Meloni is trying to improve things.

[shadydave]

Springfield, OH = 65%

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

Which I would interpret as they are far more scared and rightly so than the idiots who just count how many Tren de Aragua are in the country. MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

It doesn't help when you have immigrants protesting in the streets demanding open borders and welfare payments while flying their own countries flags.

https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1883664100800217555

Does not knowing the true numbers actually create an argument that there is or isn't a benefit?

This post is as useful as anyone pointing out the economic models showing a benefit are false when compare to actuals. Oh wait, that is more useful.

[mad.casual]

Does not knowing the true numbers actually create an argument that there is or isn't a benefit?

And, once again, actually all sides or no sides. There are immigrants here who don't want open borders and welfare payments who *don't* riot in the streets. They don't want more people and more welfare payments because they actually contribute and see their contributions being squandered. Granting greater rights to the illegal foreign nationals voids naturalized immigrants' rights and redistributes their wealth as well the natives.

Unless, of course, you don't actually give a shit about any immigrants and it's simply about the redistribution of wealth and forcing chaos in a bid for or extortion of power under a banner of false virtue.

[shadydave]

"Unless, of course, you don't actually give a shit about any immigrants and it's simply about the redistribution of wealth and forcing chaos in a bid for or extortion of power under a banner of false virtue."

It's why they malded so bad over the Martha's Vineyard stunt: it exposed what they were all really about.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Precious passive-aggressive elitist globalism?

[Uomo Del Ghiaccio]

Interesting Info-graphic, but what is it not telling or taking account for. Statistics can be and usually are twisted to present a desired outcome or narrative. At what point does an immigrant stops being an immigrant. By definition the Info-graphic must only be accounting for legal immigrants and not illegal immigrants and there is a world of difference between the two regardless is the media constantly attempt to conflate the two.

We have a border crisis because our legal immigration process is so incredibly onerous and dysfunctional. While we need to address the border crisis to stem the flow, the root of the problem need to be addressed to fix the actual problem.

It is reasonable for the citizens of a country to screen immigration for know criminals and undesirable characters if for nothing other than safety and lawfulness. Illegal immigration by passes this safety check, but the current legal immigration is so bad that it provides the incentive avoid it and go the illegal route.

It not just the money it costs, but also huge amounts of time and how stalled people applying from working, leaving (even for the death of a family member), and a whole host of typical government bureaucracy nonsense administered by disinterested, not caring government employees that view applicants as a pain and not as a human.

1) Stop the flow of illegal immigrants bypassing the border crossings.
2) Have the military assist processing immigrants at the border crossings applying for refugee status to free up border patrol for #1.
3) Set DOGE loose on the legal immigration process to identify either items to reform or throw away and rebuild.
4) Congress to implement meaningful reform based on the recommendations.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

1.5M make it through the legal channels every year. What is the actual problem aside from you wanting more?

Granted we should stop the lottery system and go to a pure merit based system.

[Rossami]

According to the definition (in the fine print) at the bottom of the infographic itself an "immigrant" for the purpose of this poll and analysis 'stops' being an immigrant only by dying or leaving. Their definition was simply "resid[ing] in a country other than where they were born." Nothing in that definition excludes illegal immigrants.

I'm not disagreeing with your rant against illegal immigration but I don't see how that's a valid criticism of this article.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

Sadly horrible that the push for immigration --- instead of working for human rights---- increases the trouble for people likely to emigrate from countries where they haven't basic dignit.

Give me one Giorgio Meloni to 100 BIden-Harris fools

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-C8ogD6E8c

[sarcasmic]

Today on 'Arguing with Idiots'...

[Medulla Oblongata]

Ideas!

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Nope.

[rrgg]

Now look at the polling on how many illegal immigrants the US takes in annually. People vastly underestimate by orders of magnitude.
Then they ask how many should be allowed. Across the board people quote far lower numbers than reality. see Center for Immigration Studies.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Put it this way--the US didn't gain 100 million residents over the last 35 years due to internal population replacement.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Hmm, maybe we should be thinking about replacing some of the existing population.

[Kungpowderfinger]

“Only a handful of apartment complexes has been taken over by Venezuelan gangs in Aurora Colorado”

https://denvergazette.com/news/crime/venezuelan-gang-tda-timeline/article_e0866290-7215-11ef-aa34-53af1764f2a2.html

[Eeyore]

Not surprised. The city let it get this bad by doing nothing.

[Eeyore]

I was going to say 10%. I had no idea it was so high at 15%.

[John Rohan]

One reason for this is likely because many children of first generation immigrants may seem indistinguishable from their parents, but they were citizens at birth so technically not immigrants.

[MasterThief]

A lot of kids born of illegal immigrants not counted in the stats.

[Vernon Depner]

Illegal immigrants themselves by definition are not counted in the stats.

[Rick James]

They went on to endorse restrictive knife laws and increased surveillance of the public with metal detectors, but a more sensible explanation would be removing the incentive for criminal gangs to battle over drug markets through legalization.

Wai... wai... wai...wai... wai...wait. Hold on. Didn't Nick Gillespie claim, in front of cameras... that everyone on that stage was essentially an immigrant?

[Brandybuck]

It's because White People see Brown People and instantly think "OMG Immigrants!"

When I was a kid back in 60s/70s, pretty much all Latinos working on a farm were derisively called "wetbacks". Poor and brown meant illegal immigrant. But many of them were not only legal, but not immigrants at all, and had ancestry dating back to before the state ever entered the union.

This doesn't mean racism. Americans see people who look "ethnic", or otherwise not like themselves, as being immigrants. But as a nation of immigrants everyone where besides the Amerindian is an immigrants.

At what point does someone stop being an immigrant? My grandparents were immigrants. Does that make my dad an immigrant? Does it make me an immigrant? What about my children? In France we would be permanent outsiders, never a True(tm) Frenchman. But we're all in that boat here in the US.

[mad.casual]

But many of them were not only legal, but not immigrants at all, and had ancestry dating back to before the state ever entered the union.

How did you know? Did you ask for papers? How did you know whom to ask for papers? Did you go around asking people "Prove to me that you aren't a wetback."?

Because your story makes it sound an awful lot like most of them probably replied with "Prove to me that you aren't mentally retarded first."

[EISTAU Gree-Vance]

Lol. Ok, boomer.

[Rick James]

I had to lol at some of your infographic stats. Australia: Wow, 37% of the country are immigrants!

ACKSHYUALLY, IT'S 30%

You Reason kids crack me up.

[Rick James]

Also... um:

*ctrl-f illega 0/0*

I mean, seriously, Reason? Are we still doing this after Donald Trump won a second time and the Chicago city council got into fisticuffs over illegal immigration?

[mad.casual]

And the complete lack of mention or differentiation makes it even more incoherent.

If illegal immigrants don't self-report at the rate of legal immigrants and natives, the data is bunk. The number (for the US) could be as high as 33% and this data wouldn't show it because when they shout "Is there anybody in there?" at the chicken coop and get "Nobody here but us chickens." in reply, they proceed along their merry way.

Even funnier, if we grant FFnC on the statistics, the 33% number means that there are lots of illegal immigrants in this country looking around and saying, "Damn there are a lot of foreigners here!"

[JD Joe]

So are we a Nation of Immigrants or not?

[Vernon Depner]

Are we a nation?

[Winston in Wonderland]

What was the point of this article?

Who cares if somebody is an immigrant...So long as they are here LEGALLY.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

I notice the byline is REASON. No one bothered taking credit for this.

[Vernon Depner]

That would depend on what the laws are. If all restrictions and enforcement were lifted and we were hit with a tsunami if Shitholian newcomers, everyone would care.

[target]

What an interesting way of misrepresenting the situation. Ignore this large concerning number on the right because it's actually lower than this completely inconsequential number on the left. *dusts off hands* problem solved!

[AT]

What does "immigrant" mean? It's including anchor babies, right? Because they may be technically Americans - but only technically.

Also, of those percentages - which ones are criminal?

Any criminal - from border jumper, to jaywalker, to recreational drug user, to gangbanger, to Colorado apartment warlord, to nursing school coed murderers. Don't make distinctions between them. Those are ALL the same criminals.

[GroundTruth]

"Legally" not "technically"....

If you don't like it, work to get the Constitution amended to clarify what you intend. Given the recent election, I'd say there is a fair chance that you could get 37 states to approve in fairly short order.

[Vesicant]

Well, maybe if they weren't out there murdering, raping, stabbing, and setting people on fire, their profile might be a little lower.

[GroundTruth]

Damned statistics ruining a good story....

[RedPilledConservative]

The real question is what share of the population are illegal immigrants. Reason is also guilty of conflating all immigrants with illegal immigrants - a difference that is key to the conservative position.