A USA Today headline (9/2/15) inaccurately conflates “immigrants” with “immigrant-led households”; many people in households headed by immigrants are US citizens, and they are the ones more likely to be receiving welfare benefits.
“Report: More Than Half of Immigrants on Welfare,” USA Today titled a recent story (9/2/15). Not mentioned in the headline is that this report was conducted by an anti-immigration think tank with ties to white supremacist groups.
Citing a study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), USA Today‘s Alan Gomez claims that roughly 51 percent of immigrant-led households receive welfare, compared to 30 percent for “native”-led households. (By “native,” the paper does not mean indigenous Americans, but rather US citizens.)
The second sentence of the article describes CIS as “a group that advocates for lower levels of immigration.” The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the leading monitor of extremist and hate groups in the US, describes CIS quite differently, calling it “part of a broad-based and well-planned effort to attack immigration in all forms.”
In its 2009 report, SPLC notes that
CIS was started in 1985 by a Michigan ophthalmologist named John Tanton—a man known for his racist statements about Latinos, his decades-long flirtation with white nationalists and Holocaust deniers, and his publication of ugly racist materials.
Despite its self-presentation as a “scholarly think tank that produces serious immigration studies,” SPLC says CIS “has frequently manipulated data to achieve the results it seeks”—a charge echoed by the Daily Beast (5/15/14), which referred to CIS as “the immigration false-fact think tank.” A scholar at the Immigration Policy Center, which has debunked many CIS studies, told the SPLC that “CIS’s attempts to blame immigrants for all of the US’s problems have been laughable.” She added, “It is clear that CIS is not interested in serious research or getting the facts straight.”
The new CIS report on welfare has already faced a barrage of criticisms, and not just from the left. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch brothers, condemned the CIS study, claiming it “does not compare apples to apples but rather apples to elephants.” Cato points out some of the sleight-of-hand used by CIS, including the fact that its unit of study is the “immigrant-led household”–which often includes spouses or children who are native-born or naturalized citizens. Since immigrants are often ineligible for many benefits, it’s clear that much of the welfare said to be going to “immigrant-led households” is actually going to US citizens.
The USA Today piece, which uses “immigrants” and “immigrant-led households” interchangeably, does cite pro-immigration conservative Linda Chavez noting “that many benefits counted in the study are going to US-born children of immigrants,” but it doesn’t refer to these children as US citizens. Chavez, a Fox News analyst and former Bush administration official, was the only critic of the study cited–and, indeed, the only source other than CIS in the article.
In part as a result of the fact that some of the people in “immigrant-led households” are not eligible for various benefits, Cato points out, “when poor immigrants use welfare they consume a lower dollar value than poor natives do.” CIS does not provide a comparison of the cost of welfare going to immigrant and non-immigrant households–presumably because such a comparison would have weakened its anti-immigrant case.
USA Today is not the only outlet uncritically echoing a flawed study by an axe-grinding organization. Many right-wing media wrote about the new report as well, including Fox News (9/2/15), Breitbart (9/2/15), the Daily Caller (9/2/15) and more. Other more centrist media picked up on it as well; AOL News (9/3/15) essentially rewrote USA Today‘s story without any new reporting, accompanied by an uncritical HuffPost News video summary.
CNBC (9/3/15) and the International Business Times (9/3/15) also reported on the study. They did include criticisms from the Cato Institute, but did not mention CIS’s ties to extremist groups.
Ben Norton is a freelance journalist and writer. His website can be found at BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Messages to USA Today can be sent here or via Twitter (@USAToday). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
In paragraph 2 above, Ben Norton implies that immigrants and U.S. citizens are mutually exclusive groups. That’s the sort of thing that FAIR picks up on when others do it.
A few paragraphs later, Norton seems to persist—at least partially—in this weird and, one has to hope, willful error: he notes that “immigrant-led households” may contain “spouses or children who are … naturalized citizens”, but he never allows that the immigrant household leader (if that’s the term) may her/himself be a citizen.
I would say that Norton’s assertion in his own voice that “immigrants are often ineligible for many benefits” also ignores the many immigrants who are citizens, though it is ambiguous and I’m sure he will say the “often” is meant to exclude them, rather than to describe the limited availability of such benefits to non-citizen immigrants while again eliding the many who are citizens.
Yet this blog post projects this silly immigrant/citizen dichotomy onto CIS, or perhaps the whole public, for the purpose of accusing CIS of “sleight of hand” when they included immigrant U.S. citizens under the category of immigrants.
If CIS has a strong anti-immigrant bias, and the study has other methodological flaws, then it is completely legitimate to point those facts out, and to take USA Today to task for not doing so, but Norton’s own confusion undermines his argument here.
Actually, for a nativist, anti-immigrant group, looking at the category of immigrants without regard as to how many of them have achieved citizenship is entirely to be expected. Since such categorization isn’t objectionable in itself (though, as Cato correctly points out, it can be used to deceptive purpose), FAIR’s attempt to discredit CIS with it here amounts to just a clumsy, ad hominem argument.
So is Norton setting up a straw man by deeming CIS’s inclusion of U.S. citizens in its immigrant numbers to be some kind of sneaky trick, or is he perhaps betraying his own unconscious biases?
Let’s be honest, when these people talk about “natives” they don’t mean all US Citizens, they mean Whites. That’s it.
Corzio flunked sex-ed so bad he had to fork over to Carla Katz $6 miillon cash, a house, a condo, law schoool tuition, and a SUV to appease his unsatisfied partner. But failed sex ed is nothing compared to Corzio failing Constitutional law, budget math, poli-sci, gov’t administration, civil rights, criminal law, and American history. CASE IN POINT Corzio stupidly appointed his Goldman-Sachs buddy Bradley Abelow as Treasury chief (Abelow did not do so well he got kicked upstairs and is now Jonny’s COS). Abelow and Corzine botched pension fund investments bigtime. The losses (THAT WE KNOW OF) include: (1) $250 miillon pension monies into a company in which Abelow’s wife was invested. Happened in Abelow’s first month in office, filed in his official 2006 ethics report. (2) Abelow invested in Amaranth Advisors LLC (that promptly lost $20 miillon for the pension system). (3) Abelow put $2 billion pension money in REITs in 2006 at a time when the real estate business was tanking. (4) Abelow put $1.6 billion pension money in Goldman Sachs’ Hedge Fund Partners. Wall Street geniuses Corzio and Abelow must have known that Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Partners reported losses of over 12% for 2006, since Abelow and Corzine are former Goldman Sachs employees. Under Abelow and Corzio, the state pension fund is $26 billion in arrears -and counting.The state is under federal investigation for improperly diverting tax-exempt bond proceeds meant for the pension fund to other uses. NOT TO FORGET Civil libertarian Corzio collaborated with a government employee to surveil tax returns of his enemies; Rocco Riccio (Carla Katz’s BIL) was ordered to turn over damaging info Corzio could use in a campaign.The bearded Buffoon paid off Riccio handsomely for violating the privacy rights of taxpayers by snooping on their confidential tax returns. Then again Hillary LOVES politicians who violate the civil rights of their political enemies. Maybe if Corzio would remove his mouth from Hillary’s backside, New Jerseyans might learn more of the Governor plans for our state.
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