That ‘If 20 Million Illegal Immigrants Left’ Post Is Phony: Stop Sharing It

What if 20 million illegal immigrants left the country?

That’s the question a seemingly well-researched social media piece poses before highlighting the virtues of mass deportation. Presumably written by Tina Griego, a veteran columnist formerly with the Denver Post, it’s a mic-dropping roll call of statistics designed to show what a bane illegal immigrants are to the United States.

Here’s just a taste.

“In Colorado, 500,000 illegal migrants, plus their 300,000 kids and grandkids would move back ‘home’ mostly to Mexico. That would save an estimated $2 billion (other experts say $7 billion) annually in taxes that pay for schooling, medical, social services and incarceration costs. It means 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver alone. Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs and the terrors that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens.”

It’s a long post, and you can read more of it at this link. However, there are several problems with it, and these problems are why you should stop sharing it immediately.

Firstly, none of the specific statistics mentioned have any sources to back them up; secondly, there are no dates to indicate when the data was derived; thirdly, it presumes none of the country’s problems with social program abuse and criminal activity are self-inflicted; and last but not least, it wasn’t even written by the woman to whom it is attributed.

While each issue is irksome, I’d specifically like to focus on this last point.

As a somewhat libertarian media type, who would vote for a chimpanzee before he’d vote for a Democrat in a national election, I feel sharing this type of thing does more harm than good to the valid point that illegal immigrants create a burden for society.

It’s certainly not fair to lay all the blame on them. After all, the U.S. has plenty of people abusing the system who deserve as much scrutiny.

Still, I’ll be one of the first to admit illegal immigrants pose problems for the nation, and our system needs to be fixed. It just doesn’t need to be fixed by sharing fabricated attempts at journalism that detract from the core discussion. I’ll wind this thing down with the words of Griego herself, who tried to clear up some of the mystery surrounding where the post originated.

“So, here’s a funny thing. A few years ago, a local man wrote an Internet column. You can find his name on your own if you’re so inclined. He called it, ‘What if 20 Million Illegal Aliens Vacated America.’

He referenced a column I wrote about a conversation with a visiting Mexican journalist. She asked what would happen if 20 million illegal immigrants returned to Mexico. She was talking about their economic contribution here, the taxes paid, the purchases of goods and services.

This question provoked our local man, prompting him to pen the aforementioned cyber-column…. That cyber-column went everywhere online. Along the way, the local man’s name disappeared from many versions, and I became known as the author. I tried to correct the record when this first happened almost three years ago.”

Griego wrote this clarification in June 2010. Today I saw three people on my Facebook feed share it. Knock it off, people, and do some flipping research before you try to make a point.

In the same way some Ferguson protesters are saying, “It doesn’t matter whether Michael Brown’s hands were up and he was surrendering when shot, it’s the principle that’s important,” you should not be sharing misinformation and then ignoring the fact that it’s misinformation to try and get at some kind of larger point. It’s irresponsible and it destroys the credibility for your argument.

That is all.

[Image via Dan Holm / Shutterstock.com]