The Good, The Bad, The Undocumented

President Donald Trump is deporting immigrants -- 11,000 last month.

Some people are unhappy about that. Last week a judge ordered a stop to Trump’s removal of Venezuelan nationals. (Deportation happened anyway.)

I definitely want immigrant criminals deported.

Trump says migrant crime is “hap- pening at levels that nobody thought possi- ble!” But that’s not true. Researching my new video, I learned that immigrants are actually less likely to get into trouble than native-born Americans.

Texas, the only state that tracks immi- grant crime, compares convictions per 100,000 Americans. Score: illegal immigrants, 782; legal immigrants, 535; native- born Americans, 1,422. It’s the opposite of what most of us have heard.

But even if immi- grants are less likely to commit crimes, there are other reasons to object to immigration:

1) Immigrants take jobs away from Americans.

2) They freeload off our welfare system.

3) They threaten our culture. I’ll take them point-by-point.

Tucker Carlson complains, “These new rivals compete primarily with the very Americans most likely to have lost their jobs.” He’s right.

Migrants take jobs from some Americans, and some Americans are out of work.

But unemploy- ment is relatively low: 4.1%. It was 8.8% when I was first hired by ABC.

Today, compa- nies complain that they can’t find enough people willing to show up on time and work.

In addition, “Every serious economic study,” says Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute, shows immi- grants “create more jobs than they destroy. You might lose your job, but you live now in a society that has ... more oppor- tunities, because many immigrants are entre- preneurs.”

They sure are.

Immigrants started Space X, eBay, Instacart, Uber, NVIDIA, SanDisk, etc. “

We benefit enor- mously from our interac- tion with immigrants,” says Brook. “Who has the right to stop us from that interaction?! ... It’s like saying: ‘I have a right to stagnate and to force all of you to stag- nate with me.’”

What about the second point?

Immigrants freeloading off welfare?

Illegal immi- grants actually don’t qualify for most benefits, but some politicians give tax money away anyway. Some give migrants credit cards. Also, immi- grants’ kids often attend public schools, hospitals treat them for free and they benefit from public services available to everyone in America. “

The way to deal with that is not to restrict immigration,” says Brook. “

Deal with that by restricting the goodies.”

Why not restrict immigration? “

Immigrants are a massive benefit to Americans,” he says. It’s true.

Trump says, “

Legal immigration. I like it. We need people.”

But even illegal immigrants are a net gain.

Not just because they harvest our food, do construction, etc., but also because Social Security and Medicare taxes are deducted from their paychecks. That’s money they never get back, because they’re not legal.

As a result, undocumented immi- grants pay more into our economy than they get back.

Some Americans say, “I support immigra-