Who benefits from immigration myths?

About those holiday discussions…

Recently, I wrote about studies suggesting that instead of avoiding politics as we share meals with the extended family, we should go ahead and dive in – to the food and the subject matter. If we can manage civil conversations, the researchers suggest, it might reduce the national temperature.

I had an opportunity to try this out. It wasn’t over Thanksgiving dinner but over a speaker phone in a car as my cousin and his wife drove to his brother’s house for dinner. After the usual joking and catching up, the conversation turned to immigration.

A little background: Cousin Bruce, a union plumber in New York City, had his own plumbing business for years in a building leased from Fred Trump. One day, a young Donald stopped by to suggest that Bruce make some improvements. Bruce pulled out his lease and pointed out that said improvements were the responsibility of the owner. Donald kept arguing, and Bruce kicked him out, telling him not to come back until the lease was up. The next day Fred appeared. “I hear you met my son,” he said. Bruce recounted their conversation. “His mother spoils him,” said the father.

The point here is that Bruce would rather pull out his fingernails than vote for Trump, but he and his wife are troubled by immigration and what they see as hordes of people pouring across an open border, who then receive welfare.

I told them the border is not open. If it was, I said, my state would be overrun with migrants, and it’s not. In fact, it’s so hard to get in that there’s a big camp of miserable people biding their time in Juarez. This was all news to my relatives.

(This was a spirited discussion, and we’re all still friends.)

Cousin Bruce is among 56% of Americans (and most migrants) who believe the border is open, according to a September Harvard-Harris poll, and among 53% of Democrats who think illegal immigration is getting worse. (The number is 88% for Republicans.)

The fact is, according to multiple public sources, the border is NOT open. With the end of Title 42, which two administrations used to expel migrants during the pandemic, border processing reverted back to existing law covering illegal border crossings. The Border Patrol has quadrupled agents over 30 years to nearly 20,000 today, and those agents routinely break border arrest records. In addition, the feds have tightened asylum rules, added barriers and increased high-tech surveillance.

The right-leaning Cato Institute has written that the open-borders criticism “is not simply inaccurate: it is unhinged from reality in a way that distinguishes itself from normal political hyperbole. Indeed, U.S. immigration policy is effectively closed borders, and Biden’s immigration policies and goals are largely the same as those of President Donald Trump.”

Rev. Todd Thomason, surprised at the momentum of the open-border myth, wrote recently in baptistnews.com: “A coordinated misinformation campaign is afoot, heightening xenophobic anxieties on the right and scapegoating foreigners for many of America’s current problems.”

How about the second myth, that our welfare system embraces everybody?

The reality, according to the National Immigration Forum, is that undocumented immigrants, even Dreamers, CANNOT receive food stamps, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They’re not eligible for Obamacare. They may receive benefits necessary to protect life.

Even green-card holders don’t have full access. Neither do refugees, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking. If they’ve been here legally for five years they qualify for limited benefits.

Clinton’s welfare reform in 1996 restricted federal benefits for legal immigrants but allowed states to fill in the gaps. For that reason, benefits vary from state to state.

We’re not likely to see Republicans debunk these myths – immigration is too good an issue for them going into an election. The surprise is that Dems aren’t doing more.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Who benefits from immigration myths?