"President Trump similarly misrepresents the terrorist threat posed by immigrants in order to justify slowing immigration while imposing "extreme vetting." He claimed that "the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country." But the people he is referencing are not immigrants!"

President Trump similarly misrepresents the terrorist threat posed by immigrants in order to justify slowing immigration while imposing "extreme vetting." He claimed that "the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country." But the people he is referencing are not immigrants!



Over the last 40 years, 3,024 people have been killed in the United States by foreign born terrorists. But 2,834 of these deaths were caused by foreign born people who came to the United States on tourist visas.



Terrorist deaths caused by people with Lawful Permanent Resident, Asylum, and Refugee visas totaled only 15. In fact, you are nearly 300,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed in a terrorist act committed by a refugee.



President Trump misrepresented the fiscal problems created by immigration when he claimed, "According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs America's taxpayers many billions of dollars a year." Actually, the referenced study provided numerous estimates – some of which showed immigrants to be a net tax drain and others a net tax gain.



Like the National Academy of Sciences study, some serious academic studies on the long-run fiscal impact of immigration find fiscal gains, and others find fiscal drains. However, the estimates tend to be small and clustered around zero. When there are drains, the solution is to tweak fiscal policy to create gains, not to restrict migration.



President Trump incorrectly blamed immigration for economic hardships faced by middle-class families. He claimed that, "By finally enforcing our immigration laws, we will raise wages [and] help the unemployed" and that eliminating low-skilled migration would "help struggling families enter the middle class."



He has no basis for such claims. Virtually no reputable scholarly study claims that immigration decreases the net number of jobs available for the native-born.

Economists debate how much wages are impacted by immigration – but not the wages of the middle class. The debate surrounds whether low-skill immigration impacts the wages of the native-born individuals without high school diplomas.



Estimates here range from no effect to a 7 percent average decline in wages. Research shows that immigration makes the native-born population, including most in the middle class – which doesn't directly compete with immigrants – wealthier, not poorer.



The real immigration problem in America is that about 11 million of the 43 million foreign born residents are here illegally. The overwhelming majority of these 11 million people are making Americans wealthier; the only "crime" they've committed is residing here illegally. Why not create a path to legality for them?



To paraphrase the President, "I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus" on real immigration problems and not populist fallacies.



Commentary by Benjamin Powell, a senior fellow with the Independent Institute, Oakland, Calif., director of the Free Market Institute and a professor of economics at the Rawls College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University.



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