Morning commuter traffic waits to cross into the United States from Tijuana, Mexico, in March 2024. South of San Diego, the San Ysidro Port of Entry is the largest land crossing between the two countries and the most transited in the Western Hemisphere. Some 70,000 vehicles and 20,000 pedestrians pass through there daily. Border and immigration issues have become dominant themes in the 2024 presidential election. (John Moore | Getty Images)

MYTH: Immigrants increase crime rates 

Among the most persistent political talking points raised by opponents of immigration is that migrants bring crime with them into the U.S.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” former President Donald Trump famously said on the campaign trail in 2016.

“Has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’?” Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance asked during a meeting with the Milwaukee Police Association in August. “We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates.”

In reality, the opposite is true. Immigrants are far less likely than U.S.-born citizens to commit crimes, numerous studies show. One study of incarceration rates going back over 150 years — between 1870 and 2020 — found that U.S.-born citizens were consistently more likely to end up in prison than immigrants. And the gap between the two groups has only increased in recent years, with immigrants 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens today, according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

Assertions that immigrants have caused spikes in crime in the areas where they settle have also been proven false. Overall, incidents of crime, including violent crime, have fallen in cities across the country since peaking during the pandemic, FBI data shows. And while politicians have claimed that border cities have been overwhelmed by lawlessness and chaos, the data shows that crime rates, including for homicide, are far lower than the national average.

The equation of immigrants with criminals is exhausting to hear for Irayda Flores, a businesswoman in Phoenix, Arizona. Flores moved to the Grand Canyon State from Sonora, Mexico, in 2004, hoping to make her entrepreneurial dreams a reality. Since then, her seafood wholesale business, El Mar de Cortez Corp, has thrived, serving restaurants across the city and employing more than a dozen people. But despite the example she and other immigrants provide, politicians continue to frame them as villains.

The rhetoric is the same every election year, she said, and it ignores the positive contributions of many of the immigrants who left their home countries to seek a better future.

“Politicians talk about the migrant community like they’re criminals, like they are really awful people,” Flores said. “But when migrants leave their country — their culture and the land that they were born and grew up in — they do it because they’re searching for opportunity. And searching for a new opportunity means they come here with the intention to work and get ahead.”

Dismissing all immigrants as criminals is harmful, she added, and unfair to the work many immigrants have put in to make a difference in their host communities.

“You can’t generalize or treat an entire immigrant group as criminals because there are people who’ve lived in the country for decades, and they bring benefits to the table,” Flores said. “They benefit the economy, they benefit their communities, and they deserve to be treated with respect.”

MYTH: There’s an invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border

While the campaign season has prompted politicians to stir up voters about an “invasion” at the country’s southern border, the situation is more complex. In late 2023, the number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border hit record highs. In December 2023, more than 300,000 encounters between border officials and migrants occurred at the country’s southern border — an all-time high. Experts believe the surge was, in part, the result of a global spike in migration patterns caused by economic strains during the pandemic.

In January 2024 the record high set in December plummeted to about 176,000 encounters. The number eventually fell to a three-year low not seen since before the pandemic. In August, the month for which the most recent data is available, encounters increased slightly from to 107,503 from 104,101 in July.

MYTH: Fentanyl is smuggled into the country by migrants

The U.S.-Mexico border stretches across nearly 2,000 miles and includes 26 land ports of entry. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents monitor both ports and the spaces in between. The vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the U.S. via legal routes by citizens, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports. More than 90% of interdicted fentanyl is confiscated by border officials at land ports of entry, according to DHS, and cartels mainly seek to move the drug across the border with the help of U.S. citizens. In fiscal year 2023, the latest year for which there is data, 86.4% of fentanyl trafficking convictions were citizens.

MYTH: Immigrants take advantage of public benefits 

In most cases, immigrants who aren’t citizens of the United States are ineligible for public benefits. Federal programs like Section 8 housing aid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)  are all strictly reserved for U.S. citizens.

Immigrants who aren’t citizens also can’t receive subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and they can’t apply for federal health insurance coverage through the marketplace.

People with legal permanent residency status, however, may be able to access some public benefits after reaching the five-year residency mark.

Some federal protections are in place to ensure that migrants have access to care if they are facing life-threatening circumstances. Emergency Medicaid helps migrants without legal status receive urgent medical treatment, and some benefits are available to migrant women under the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.

Eligibility for state public benefit programs varies across the country and can range from access to driver’s licenses to in-state tuition rates and scholarships.

MYTH: It’s easy to gain U.S. citizenship 

Gaining citizenship is a costly, multistep and complicated process. And backlogged naturalization and asylum systems mean long wait times for hopeful migrants.

Those seeking to achieve legal status through marriage must pass a number of hurdles meant to verify that the marriage is genuine, including periodic interviews with immigration officials. Couples often spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and years in the application process.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals grants people without legal status who were brought to the country as minors protection from deportation and a temporary work permit, but recipients must meet strict criteria to qualify. That includes living in the U.S. since 2007, having arrived in the country before turning 16, no significant criminal convictions and either current enrollment in a high school, a diploma or a GED.

DACA recipients who were accepted into the program must reapply for a renewal every two years. And while recipients can apply for legal residency status if they are eligible through their family or via employment-based immigration, the DACA program is currently frozen. Though applications are still being accepted, they aren’t being processed while the program is under ongoing litigation that threatens to end it altogether.

Asylum seekers must undergo fear screenings with immigration officials to determine if their concerns about persecution or threats to their lives warrant being granted protection in the U.S. New guidance issued by the Biden administration barring the consideration of asylum claims when high numbers of migrant encounters occur has made it more difficult for people to request asylum.

Those hoping for a resolution in their asylum or refugee cases might wait years. In 2019, the immigration backlog ballooned to more than 1 million cases, a number that only doubled in the following years. As of September, the number of pending immigration cases exceeded 3 million. The average time it takes to close a case is four years, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an organization that compiles and analyzes federal immigration data.

MYTH: Immigrants don’t pay taxes

Roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, and all of them pay some form of taxes. An analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey, an annual demographics survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, estimated that immigrants contributed $383 billion in federal taxes, and $196 billion in state and local taxes. And while people without legal status can’t benefit from Social Security, the administration receives about $13 billion from the paychecks of workers without citizenship status every year.

Saúl Rascón moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 5-years-old. He became a DACA recipient in high school and has been employed ever since. Today, he works with Aliento Votes, a pro-immigrant voter outreach campaign. Accusations that immigrants don’t pay their taxes irritate Rascón, who views it as a way to diminish the demographic group’s contributions.

“It’s particularly frustrating when immigrants are pinned as this economic deficit and harm when it’s been proven time and time again that they’re not,” he said.

The problem, Rascón said, is that the claim is believable to the average voter who doesn’t do additional research. And that claim is dangerous for all immigrants, including himself, because it could engender hostility towards the community as a whole.

The spread of disinformation about immigrants is harmful, he added, not just because it fosters anti-immigrant sentiment, but also because it makes it more difficult to find common ground when it comes to changing the country’s immigration system. While Republican politicians have focused on riling up their base against immigrants, Democrats have shifted to the right on the issue, increasingly spotlighting enforcement policy to capture as many votes as possible.

“We’re no longer focusing our energy on our Dreamers and DACA, on undocumented people who’ve been here, and contributing taxes,” Rascón said. “We’ve seen a shift towards border security, which isn’t unproductive but it’s not the best use of our time and resources.”

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Claudia Kline, an organizer for Our Voice, Our Vote Arizona, speaks to a group of canvassers before they set out to knock on doors in 106-degree weather in Phoenix on Thursday, Sept. 26. The organization is part of a coalition that vowed to knock on 3 million doors by November. (Gloria Rebecca Gomez | Arizona Mirror)

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

As former President Donald Trump worked to scuttle a bipartisan border deal in Congress because it threatened to derail his campaign’s focus on immigration, Republicans in Arizona unveiled a plan to empower local officials to jail and deport migrants, decrying the federal government’s lack of solutions.

“Arizona is in a crisis,” state Senate President Warren Petersen said in late January. “This is directly due to the negligent inaction of the Biden administration.”

What followed were months of GOP lawmakers in Arizona making use of Trump’s border security rhetoric, employing xenophobic language to cast immigrants and asylum-seekers as criminals. But there was strident opposition to the plan, too, from many Latino and immigrant Arizonans who traveled to the state Capitol to protest the legislation.

Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris offer starkly different plans for the future of the 11 million people who live in the United States without legal status. Harris, in a bid to stave off accusations that she’s soft on the border, has sought to establish a firm security stance. To that end, she has vowed to bring back and sign the torpedoed bipartisan border deal.

On the campaign trail, Trump has taken a far more hawkish approach, promising mass deportations. He has offered few details, other than that he would be willing to involve the U.S. National Guard. President Joe Biden, Trump and other recent presidents have deployed the National Guard or military troops to support Border Patrol actions, but not in direct law enforcement roles.

Immigration has consistently ranked high among voter concerns nationwide, following heightened political rhetoric and a record-breaking number of unlawful border crossings in late 2023. Those numbers have since plummeted to a three-year low, but the U.S. border with Mexico remains a key talking point for Republican politicians.

But immigration is a far more complex topic than border security alone, and strategists may be miscalculating by failing to consider some key voters and their nuanced perspectives, recent polling shows.

Growing populations of new and first-generation citizens in the swing states — with the power to sway elections — are transforming demographics and voter concerns.

In Arizona, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the legislation that would have allowed local law enforcement to usurp federal authority on immigration, but Republicans repackaged it as a ballot initiative called the “Secure the Border Act.” In a state that Biden won by fewer than 11,000 votes four years ago, and where political strategists anticipate high voter turnout, the ballot measure serves as a test of whether the GOP’s immigration position will drive people to the polls in a swing state.

While many Republicans hope the immigration issue boosts their chances in down-ballot races, progressive organizations are working to mobilize voters in opposition through canvassing and voter registration drives.

Living United for Change in Arizona was established in the aftermath of the state’s controversial “show me your papers” law — SB 1070 — passed 14 years ago by Republican lawmakers. LUCHA Chief of Staff Abril Gallardo derided this year’s Secure the Border Act as the latest iteration of that law.

“Arizonans are sick of Republicans trying to bring back the SB 1070 era of separating families, mass deportations and children in detention centers,” she said. “We’re here to say, ‘Not on our watch.’”

The ballot measure has been widely criticized as greenlighting discrimination. Among other provisions, it would make it a state crime for migrants to cross the southern border anywhere except a legal port of entry and punish first-time offenders with six months in jail. Local police officers would be authorized to carry out arrests based on suspicion of illegal entry, and Arizona judges would be empowered to issue orders of deportation, undermining court rulings that have concluded that enforcing immigration law is the sole purview of the federal government.

Gallardo said that LUCHA is focused on engaging with voters to ensure the proposal fails. The organization is part of a coalition of advocacy groups committed to knocking on more than 3 million doors before November.

“They can try to ignore us, but come Election Day and beyond, they will hear us, they will see us, and they will feel the strength of our movement,” she said.

An August UnidosUS and BSP Research survey asked Latino voters in Arizona about their top priorities on several issues related to immigration policy. The results show strong support for protecting longtime residents from deportation and offering them a path to citizenship — along with cracking down on human smugglers and drug traffickers. Policies centered on building a wall or mass deportation ranked near the bottom. In recent years, Latino voters in the state have helped reject virulently anti-immigrant candidates.

Latino voting strength

In 2020, Latinos made up about 20% of the state’s electorate, and they largely favored Biden over Trump. Then, two years later, a record-breaking number of Latinos voted in an election that saw Democrats win statewide offices. Today, 1 in 4 Arizona voters is Latino, and a new poll from Univision estimates that more than 600,000 will cast their ballots in the state’s November election.

The Grand Canyon State is far from the only swing state with both impactful Latino and new-citizen voting blocs.

Still, campaigns might be ignoring these voters. The UnidosUS poll showed 51% of Latino voters in Georgia hadn’t been contacted by either party or any campaign, even though 56% say they’re sure they’ll vote.

“This is, I think, a wake-up call for both parties to reach out into the Latino community,” said BSP senior analyst Stephen Nuño-Perez in a Georgia Recorder story. “There’s still not a lot of education out there on why Latinos should be voting for one party or the other.”

The numbers hovered right around there in other swing states. In Pennsylvania, that was true for 50% of the people polled. In North Carolina, it was 49%. In Nevada, 53%. In each case, a higher percentage said they plan to vote.

Influence grows in dairy country

The number of Latino voters in Wisconsin is a fraction of the electorate that lives in states closer to the U.S.-Mexico border but no less impactful. There are roughly 180,000 eligible Latino voters who call the Badger State home. Biden carried Wisconsin in 2020 by a margin of about 21,000 votes, less than 1 percentage point.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz is the executive director of Voces de la Frontera, a civil and workers rights organization that advocates on behalf of immigrants. She said that over time, the Latino vote has become increasingly sought after by politicians looking to gain office.

“If you don’t get it, you don’t win it,” she said.

Neumann-Ortiz said that the rise of the Latino electorate has translated into political power. The group has been a longtime backer of driver’s licenses for Wisconsinites without full citizenship status, and occupational licenses for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a federal policy that grants temporary work permits and protection from deportation to people who arrived in the country as minors.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia allow people without citizenship status to obtain driver’s licenses. And just 12 give DACA recipients the opportunity to obtain medical or legal licenses.

Legislation in Wisconsin to open up access to either license was blocked by the GOP legislative majority, though the movement behind the proposals drew support from top officials, including Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who backed driver’s licenses for all as a policy priority last year. Influential lobbying organizations, such as the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation and the Dairy Business Association, both of which lean conservative, also threw their weight behind the push for universal driver’s licenses.

Neumann-Ortiz attributes that support to the fact that immigrants make up a large part of the state’s dairy and agricultural industries. And in rural areas where dairy operations and farms are located, public transportation is sparse. United Migrant Opportunity Services, a Milwaukee-based farmworker advocacy organization, estimates that as much as 40% of the state’s dairy workers are immigrants. Other estimates indicate they contribute 80% of the labor on dairy farms.

Despite being over 1,000 miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration and border security are key issues for Wisconsinites, and their positions appear mixed. In a September survey from Marquette University’s Law School, 49% said they agreed with deporting all immigrants who have lived in the country for years, have jobs and no criminal record, while 51% opposed it.

Newly minted citizens stand to break new electoral ground

Laila Martin Garcia moved to the United States with her husband and infant son eight years ago. November will be the first time she casts her ballot for a U.S. presidential candidate since she became a naturalized citizen two years ago in Pennsylvania, and she’s elated.

“The main reason for me to become a citizen was to vote,” she said. “You know, this is home. This is where my husband is, where my son is being raised, and I wanted to make sure that I was using my voice in any way possible.”

She’s part of another segment of the electorate that will have a chance to respond in the voting booth to the election-year emphasis on immigration: newly naturalized voters. In fiscal year 2023, just over 878,000 immigrants became naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. That number represents a slight decline from the previous fiscal year, when a little more than 969,000 people achieved naturalization –— the highest number of new citizens in a decade.

Newly naturalized voters can close the gaps in swing state races, according to Nancy Flores, who serves as the deputy director of the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of immigrant and refugee rights organizations.

Every presidential election year, the coalition partners with local organizations to assist eligible immigrants as they embark on the naturalization process and help newly naturalized citizens register to vote. New citizens, Flores said, are a great investment, because once they’ve made a commitment to vote, they will likely continue to do so. And naturalized voters appear to cast their ballots at higher rates than U.S.-born citizens. In the 2020 election, about 66% of the general electorate turned out to vote, compared with nearly 87% of naturalized voters surveyed by the organization.

This year appears on track to repeat that trend: As many as 97.3% of naturalized voters residing in states polled by the National Partnership for New Americans — including in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania — reported that they plan to vote this fall.

“For a lot of folks, reaching the point of citizenship is really a lifetime achievement,” Flores said. “And we see that folks really don’t take that lightly.”

And while Flores noted that naturalized citizens don’t fit one single voter profile, most of them do share an immigrant background and so are sympathetic on the issue.

“New American voters are not a monolith,” she said. “Folks that are naturalized are doctors, professors. We have folks that are naturalized that are picking the fruit that we eat. It really runs the gamut, but the common thread is the immigrant experience.”

A poll conducted by the organization found that naturalized voters share many of the same concerns as other U.S. voters, including worries about inflation and the economy. But, Flores added, candidates who are looking to attract naturalized voters are likely to be most successful with the demographic group when they present a positive view of immigration.

“Looking at immigration as an asset to our country, looking at how it can benefit the economy, looking at how we can provide pathways [to citizenship] that are humane — those things resonated with voters,” she said.

Similarly, Martin Garcia’s experiences as an immigrant have colored her views as a voter. Immigration reform, she said, is at the top of her priorities. Originally from Barcelona, Spain, Martin Garcia arrived in the U.S. in the middle of Trump’s first campaign, and she said she saw firsthand what his anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies wrought.

In her work as an advocate, she frequently helped families torn apart by deportations, and in her personal life, while trying to share her language and culture with her son, she dealt with nativist hostility. During one incident at the grocery store, while she was helping her toddler identify items in Spanish, a stranger accosted her.

“I remember he came up to me and said, ‘We’re in America, speak American,’” she recalled. “Now that I think of that moment, I have so many things to say to that person. But at that moment, I was so scared. I just took my child, left my cart there with half of my groceries, and left the shop.”

Today, she recalls that incident, and the rallies and protests during Trump’s presidency, as catalysts for her civic engagement. Martin Garcia said she views the 2024 election as an opportunity to look out for the immigrant community’s needs.

“We deserve to thrive, and we will be thinking about that,” she said. “We have to make sure that our communities have the right to thrive in this election.”

This story has been updated with additional photographs and data visualization graphics.

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