Title: Ten Myths About Immigration | Learning for Justice
Headings: Ten Myths About Immigration
Ten Myths About Immigration
1. Most immigrants are here illegally.
2. It's easy to enter the country legally. My ancestors did; why can’t immigrants today?
3. Today's immigrants don't want to learn English.
4. Immigrants take good jobs from U.S. citizens.
5. “The worst” people from other countries are coming to the United States and bringing crime and violence.
6. Undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes and burden the national economy.
7. The United States is being overrun by immigrants like never before.
8. We can stop undocumented immigrants coming to the United States by building a wall along the border with Mexico.
9. Banning immigrants and refugees from majority-Muslim countries will protect the United States from terrorists.
10. Refugees are not screened before entering the United States.

Content: According to the American Immigration Council, a nonpartisan group, research indicates there is little connection between immigrant labor and unemployment rates of native-born workers. Two trends—better education and an aging population—have resulted in a decrease in the number of workers born in the United States who are willing or available to take low-paying jobs. Across all industries and occupations, though, immigrants who are naturalized citizens and non-citizens are outnumbered by workers born in the United States ( see Table 1.7 ). Another version of this myth is that it is undocumented immigrants who are taking jobs. However, the U.S. civilian workforce included 8 million unauthorized immigrants in 2014, which accounts for only 5 percent of the entire workforce. Compared with their small share of the civilian workforce overall, immigrants without authorization are only overrepresented in service, farming and construction occupations ( see Table 1 ). This may be due to the fact that, to fill the void of low-skilled U.S. workers, employers often hire undocumented immigrant workers. One of the consequences of this practice is that it is easier for unscrupulous employers to exploit this labor source, paying immigrants less, refusing to provide benefits and ignoring worker-safety laws. On an economic level, U.S. citizens benefit from relatively low prices on food and other goods produced by undocumented immigrant labor. 5. “