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Times columnist Hector Tobar goes through a series of "facts" about illegal immigration that he keeps getting in his email, and discovers that - surprise, surprise! - they're either terribly distorted or just outright untrue. No matter - recipients are advised to pass them along. "If this doesn't open your eyes," the letter declares, "nothing will." Sadly, too many people who should know better are falling for this viral nonsense.
1. "40% of all workers in L.A. County are working for cash and not paying taxes. . . . This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card." The source of this information seems to be a 2005 study by the Economic Roundtable on the informal economy in Los Angeles County. Its findings were reported in The Times and other papers. But the chain-mail's author more than doubled the figures in that study, which estimated that 15% of the county workforce was outside the regulated economy in 2004. Illegal immigrants getting paid in cash, it said, probably made up about 9% of the workforce. A later Economic Roundtable report, by the way, credited immigrants with keeping the local economy from shrinking in the 1990s.
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3. "75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens." We traced this figure to something circulating on the Internet under the name "the 2006 (First Quarter) INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants." The "report" contains similar figures for Phoenix, Albuquerque and other cities. But it isn't an actual government document. The INS ceased to exist in 2003, after the Department of Homeland Security was created. There's something really disturbing about a work of fakery meant to tarnish an entire class of people. You wonder what kind of person would pen such a thing.
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6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages. This information apparently comes from a 1987 article in which The Times visited a sampling of properties across the county and looked for unauthorized garage conversions. The story concluded that 200,000 people lived in such dwellings. The story made no effort, however, to determine immigration status. I'd like to point out that just living in an "illegal garage" doesn't make you "an illegal." You might just be a starving artist, or a guy who recently lost his job.
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.