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An anti-Immigration activist at a Tuesday protest in Oracle, Arizona, where there were reportedly more signs welcoming migrants than sending them home on a bus. Photograph: Sandy Huffaker / Getty Photograph: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images
An anti-Immigration activist at a Tuesday protest in Oracle, Arizona, where there were reportedly more signs welcoming migrants than sending them home on a bus. Photograph: Sandy Huffaker / Getty Photograph: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Illegals and gangsters and Ebola, oh my! 5 conservative immigration myths of the moment, made sane

This article is more than 9 years old

As lawmakers seek a solution to the border crisis, the hysterics have reached a new level. We separate punditry from reality

Just when you thought Washington was out to do something, the yellers pull you back in. Bipartisan legislation from Texas lawmakers is set to be introduced any moment now, in an effort (albeit a broad one) to answer President Obama’s call for “an urgent humanitarian situation” to the migrant crisis on the US border with Central America, and Republicans are reportedly interested in providing half of the emergency funding he has requested.

Yet this seems like the moment when so many immigration conspiracies – pumped for weeks by conservative websites, talk-radio hosts and Fox News – are just now ratcheting up. Somewhere (hint: national television), Dick Cheney is talking about “integrity” on the border.

From secret plots and diseases to the truth about Tuesday’s new protests and life back in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, here is some sanity – with charts.

Theory No1: Obama is ‘secretly dispersing illegal immigrants around the country’

The source: Who else but former one-term Florida congressman Allen West, who took a break from accusing the president of drinking and smoking pot on the job while raising money off impeachment threats to rise above “all the pundits” on his website. “Hmm,” he wrote in a Monday blog post, “let’s analyze this.”

Illegal immigrant children are being quietly dumped in states without the states’ knowledge or consent. ... Texas and Arizona have Republican Governors and are red states, and apparently President Obama has no interest in stemming the flow of illegals entering these two states. ... Nebraska is another red state – could it be the liberal progressive objective is to begin altering the demographics there as well? And mighty interesting that the other two places where these illegal immigrant children may be settled, Chicago and Delaware, are the home states of the president and vice president. Those are facts, not conjecture or hyperbole, and certainly not conspiracy theory.

The ensuing hysterics: “If O gives amnesty to millions of illegal aliens,” the conservative author Janie Johnson tweeted to her nearly 79,000 followers on Tuesday morning, “will he also count them in the unemployment numbers? Just wondering!”

The reality: As MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin noted on Twitter last week, “[t]he ‘fundamental transformation’ of America through immigration” against which Sarah Palin and West are pushing back “is happening already.” He cited this Census breakdown from the Pew Research Center:

hispanic children united states map
In 2012, one out of every American newborns were Hispanic. (Map via Pew Research Center) Photograph: via Pew Research Center

So, yes, Hispanic children are quietly entering states like Texas, Arizona, Nebraska and Illinois ... because they’re being born there.

The demographics of this country are altering, but that doesn’t mean Democrats’ advantage among Hispanic voters are easy to measure. And while a new poll shows that President Obama may have the upper hand in favorability over Republicans in dealing with the current immigration crisis, his administration is making no secret of its intentions: White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Tuesday afternoon that Monday’s flight carrying 40 migrant deportees back to Honduras should “send a message”. Whether Allen West wants to hear it – hmm, we’ll see. —Matt Sullivan

Theory No2: Undocumented migrants are bringing Ebola and measles to America

fox news diseases border
‘Measles and chickenpox and leprosy?!’ To which Fox’s medical correspondent responded: ‘Absolutely.’ Photograph: Screenshot via FoxNews.com

The source: Three weeks ago, one local news story out of South Texas led to a Drudge- and Fox News-fueled pile-on: chicken pox, TB, even swine flu. Then, “outbreak” – and now ...

The ensuing hysterics:

Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning. Many of the children who are coming across the border also lack basic vaccinations such as those to prevent chicken pox or measles. This makes those Americans that are not vaccinated – and especially young children and the elderly – particularly susceptible.

—Rep Phil Gingrey (R - Georgia), in a letter to the director of the Centers for Disease Control

The reality:

EBOLA: Ebola is a frightful virus, to be sure – an easy shorthand for a terrifying, exotic threat. It manifests as “a severe, often fatal disease”, marked by fever, diarrhea, and, in some cases, bleeding. We don’t know much about where Ebola comes from (there is no identified reservoir) and have only scratched the surface on how it spreads (human-to-human by direct contact or via infected objects, after a hypothesized first contact with an infected animal).

But we do know this much: Ebola has never been reported in Latin America. Repeat: never. Not even in cases of laboratory contamination, which have resulted in human infection in Russia and England, and animal infection in the US. All naturally-occurring cases of “human illness or death [due to Ebola] have occurred in Africa,” according to the CDC.

The largest Ebola outbreak on record is currently ravaging the west African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which may be why the disease has entered the popular imagination of US politicians looking for anti-immigrant scare tactics.

Measles: immunization rate by country – chart
Chart: Nadja Popovich / The Guardian

MEASLES: Ironically, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico – the four countries sending the largest numbers of unaccompanied minors to the US, according to Pew – all have higher measles vaccination rates than the US.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have reported exactly zero cases of measles each year since 2008 to the World Health Organization, while Mexico noted 3 in 2011. The US reports 50 to 225 annually. —Nadja Popovich

Theory No3: ‘violence is likely not the primary cause of the surge of thousands of unaccompanied minors’

The source: On Monday, Brendan Darby of Breitbart published unclassified but significantly redacted “leaked documents” from the El Paso Intelligence Center (Epic), a DEA-run intelligence gathering and coordination group focused on drug enforcement. They baldly state underage migrants are fleeing El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala not so much because of drug- and gang-violence as they are influenced by “traditional migration factors” (i.e., economics) and misperceptions about their ability to remain in the US.

The Epic analysis broadly mirrors earlier statements by Guatemala’s first lady denying that there are no gangs in the municipalities from which children are fleeing (which were largely debunked).

The ensuing hysterics: While Darby’s report got Drudged, it didn’t see wide pick-up even on conservative outlets, possibly because it’s so stupid.

The reality: The Department of Homeland Security reports that the surge in minor refugees is due to widespread violence. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 50% of the minors it interviewed “reported experiencing violence or having received threats from gangs, drug cartels, or state actors, such as the police.”

Oh, and the crime reports Epic used to underscore its conclusions are from 2012 – before the current crisis of child migrants started, and while a gang truce was still in effect. That truce officially collapsed earlier this year, but may never really have affected the murder rate – the discovery of a mass grave in early 2014 indicated the increase in “disappearances” may have simply offset the supposed murder rate decline.

And none of that takes into account Epic’s long history of distributing outdated “intelligence” information or its well-documented coordination and analysis problems that have led law enforcement agencies to ignore its data for at least five years. —Megan Carpentier

Theory No4: Citizens militias are more effective than the National Guard

texas militia
Truck driver Chris Davis was galvanizing a citizen militia before he disappeared from the spotlight. Photograph via Facebook Photograph: via Facebook

The source: Key players in the Republican party like Texas governor Rick Perry have been calling for increased National Guard presence at the border, while the state’s always-level-headed congressman Louie Gohmert declared that “we are under invasion”.

Meanwhile, other public figures like Paul Babeu, the controversial bus-blocking sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, have been highlighting criminals who cross the border. “When the federal government fails to enforce our immigration laws, monsters like this get into our country,” he wrote on Facebook. “Enough is enough. We MUST secure the border and deport those who are here illegally. Period.”

Ensuing hysterics: So it’s nosurprise that some citizens are … going there. In July, the San Antonio Express-News reported that several anti-government groups were attempting to band together to form a citizen’s militia. The movement, known as Operation Secure Our Border, aimed to bring together armed groups committed to keeping undocumented immigrants from entering the country, and assist local law enforcement in doing so.

Shockingly, this plan ran into trouble.

The reality: First of all, the US Customs and Border Protection wanted nothing to do with these shenanigans.

Then, the purported leader, Chris Davis, a 37-year-old truck driver, was discovered to have been discharged from the Army in 2001 “under other than honorable conditions”. After word spread of Operation Secure Our Border’s intent, Davis renounced the spotlight, according to the Express:

Davis deleted his Facebook and YouTube accounts, including a 21-minute video in which he describes plans for ‘securing the border:’ ‘How?’ he asked on the video. ‘You see an illegal. You point your gun dead at him, right between his eyes, and you say, “Get back across the border or you will be shot.”

Allies said Davis had “gone black”, and he cancelled appearances on Fox News and the Truth Broadcasting Network. While some who had rooted for Davis and his merry band were outraged that he decided to stand down, his natural allies were relieved: anti-government activist Mike Vanderboegh called Davis’s movement a “cluster-coitus in the making”.

On Tuesday, even the head of the National Guard under George W Bush admitted the current crisis was too complex to determine “whether this is an appropriate use of the Guard” – the real one. Kayla Epstein

Theory No5: Border residents don’t want immigrants in their towns

The source: Anti-illegal immigration activists are making a lot of noise with their bus-blocking protests – and the noise has echoed. Arrests at a July 4th clash in Murrieta, California became a kind of rallying cry: “Who wants to be the next Murrieta?” asked Rachel Maddow, rather facetiously, while pointing to forums calling for the emulation of “the government’s efforts to dump illegal aliens into their town” and for rallies in more than 250 locations this weekend.

The ensuing hysterics: On Tuesday, duelling protests kicked off in Oracle, Arizona, where Central American children are expected to be dropped off at a youth ranch in the area. The Drudge Report expected a NEW SHOWDOWN. Fox News asked: “Another Murrieta?”

The reality:

Now more with "welcome" signs than protesters in Oracle. Live: http://t.co/N5JFZhDwkE #immigration #busblockade pic.twitter.com/ZqDM7lxngw

— Arizona Daily Star (@TucsonStar) July 15, 2014

The founding vice president of Somos America has organized a group of immigrants-rights supporters to oppose protesters in Oracle, Arizona, the Arizona Republic reported.

“(We will) offer moral support to the children on the buses,” Roberto Reveles told the paper. “They will feel that the screaming protesters represent our nation. It does not.”

But it’s not just activists who are turning out in support of the migrants.

“We view this as a refugee crisis, not an immigration issue,” Oracle resident Frank C Pierson told the Arizona Republic. “To treat these kids as pawns in immigration fights is seriously wrong-headed.” Lauren Gambino

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