Donald Trump dropped his long-awaited immigration position paper this week. To no one’s surprise, it is a long list of restrictionist clichés about immigrants taking jobs, abusing welfare, and lowering wages for Americans. Here are the five biggest inaccuracies:
Inaccuracy #1: America is experiencing “record immigration levels.”
This claim is not remotely true. As I showed in a recent Niskanen report, today’s immigration rate—new permanent residents as a percentage of the U.S. population—is half the historical average and a quarter of its record highs in the early 20th century. While the immigrant population already here is growing as a share of the population, this is not due to unprecedented immigration, but to Americans’ unprecedented low birthrates.
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