Not surprisingly, the “$300 billion” figure Jim McKelvey cites as the annual cost to taxpayers of illegal immigration is not correct. What is a bit surprising is how willing McKelvey is to use an outright lie, one that has been completely discredited, even by the conservative Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Check this out.
This chain e-mail has been forwarded to us by readers many times over the past year. The most recent version adds a new angle, claiming that the amount of money taxpayers spend on illegal immigrants would be enough to “stimulate the economy.” But no matter the spin, the e-mail is rife with errors.
It also contains several red flags that should tip off readers that this is more bogus than believable. For one thing, the figures given don’t add up to a “whopping $338.3 billion dollars a year” spent on illegal immigrants in the U.S., as the e-mail claims.
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The source cited for at least nine of the items is either the conservative Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) or the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), both of which call for more restrictive immigration laws. CIS spokesman Bryan Griffith told us that he had never seen the e-mail but that he suspected something was out there because of occasional surges in traffic that forced him to rewrite Web pages. When told about the e-mail’s contents and conclusion of a $338.3 billion yearly cost, he responded that CIS “never said anything of the like and is not going to comment on a chain e-mail that is in no way scientific.”
In the end, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the actual cost to taxpayers of illegal immigration is “most likely modest,” but it’s far, far, far less than the “338.3 billion” figure (from a completely debunked chain email, no less) that Jim McKelvey uses in his ad. So, if you’re running for office, do you just get to outright lie through your teeth on TV without any consequences? Why would any station air a completely fallacious ad?
P.S. In other, fun 5th CD Republican news, check this out. Yikes.
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