Miller Mayer immigration attorney Steve Yale-Loehr was quoted by the Associated Press in “Video Spreads False Claims About Immigrants.” Regarding claims that immigrants living in the United States without authorization commit a high number of crimes, he said, “Almost every reputable report that I have seen has found that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native born U.S. citizens.” Steve cited a 2020 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. Using data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the study found that immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization have “substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses.” Regarding an estimate of the number of immigrants who could be living in the United States without authorization, Steve said, “Their numbers of 21 million are just wildly off base. They are double what reputable research organizations have found.”
He pointed to the Pew Research Center, which estimated that 10.5 million immigrants were living in the U.S. without authorization as of 2017. Regarding claims by conservative activist Candace Owens, citing a 2011 Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report, that immigrants living in the United States use public benefits at a high rate and that 80% never go off welfare, Steve noted that a 2002 Brookings Institution report states that use of welfare by legal permanent residents has declined by a faster rate than use of such benefits by citizens. “The CIS report doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants,” Steve noted. “Neither report states that 80% of undocumented immigrants never go off welfare. The bottom line: These two reports fail to support Candace Owens’ claim.” Find the article here.