Just because a group calls itself FAIR doesn’t mean it is.
Take the Federation for American Immigration Reform – FAIR – the group behind Arizona’s odious new immigration law (scroll to the end for the part where the group takes credit for helping craft it).
Not content with passage of the law, FAIR has continued to advise Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on measures that seem to have nothing to do with illegal immigration and everything to do with hating people who are brown and speak Spanish.
Those who track extremist hate groups in the United States have long had FAIR on their radar. In 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated FAIR a hate group, noting that its founders and key associates have ties to white supremacist and Holocaust denial groups.
People who were paying attention when AZ 1070 was passed knew full well that FAIR and its legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, was behind it.
But apparently FAIR’s unsavory connections were not of concern to some media outlets who jumped on the group’s dubiously-sourced July 6 report claiming that undocumented immigrants cost American taxpayers more than $113 billion a year.
The New Mexico Business Weekly carried a story and linked to the alarming-sounding numbers in FAIR’s report. On Monday, the right-wing talk radio station KKOB-AM featured the report on its 9 a.m. call-in show and offered the numbers up as red meat to its rabid anti-immigration listeners – including some that were supposedly calculated just for New Mexico. Nationally, FOX News trumpeted the study’s findings throughout the weekend.
What you might not have heard is that, within hours of the study’s release, the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit think-tank dedicated to “standing up for sensible and humane immigration policies that reflect American values” came forward with three “fatal flaws” in FAIR’s study – flaws so grave as to render its findings meaningless.
From the AIC press release:
“….in its rush to portray unauthorized immigrants as nothing more than a drain on the public treasury, FAIR completely discounts the economic contributions of unauthorized workers and consumers. Moreover, FAIR inflates their cost estimate by indiscriminately lumping together native-born, U.S.-citizen children with their unauthorized parents.
FAIR’s report suffers from three fatal flaws:
The report notes that the single biggest “expense” it attributes to unauthorized immigrants is the education of their children, yet most of these children are native-born, U.S. citizens who will grow up to be tax-paying adults. It is disingenuous to count the cost of investing in the education of these children, so that they will earn higher incomes and pay more in taxes when they are adults, as if it were nothing more than a cost incurred by their parents.
The report fails to account for the purchasing power of unauthorized consumers, which supports U.S. businesses and U.S. jobs.
The report ignores the value added to the U.S. economy by unauthorized workers, particularly in the service sector.
At least the FOX story included this information about FAIR, calling it “a conservative organization that seeks to end almost all immigration to the U.S.” and included this passage:
Groups that support immigration reform immediately attacked FAIR’s report and pointed out that it is the polar opposite of the Perryman Report, a 2008 study that found illegal immigration was actually a boon to the American economy. It estimated that illegal immigrants add $245 billion in Gross Domestic Product to the economy and account for 2.8 million jobs.
Unfortunately, the lopsided, inaccurate report issued by a known hate group was picked up and taken as gospel by way too many media outlets.
It really is a shame.
Tags: American Immigration Council, Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer, AZ 1070, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Immigration Policy Center, Immigration Reform Law Institute, Perryman Report
