MYTHBUSTING: Amid Rising Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric, Comptroller Lander Unveils Fact Sheet on How Immigrants Benefit New York City

Amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment and rhetoric with the arrival of asylum seekers in New York, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released a fact sheet called Facts, Not Fear, dispelling prevalent myths surrounding immigrants’ impact on the country and New York City’s population and economy. 

“For nearly two centuries, New York has been a welcome harbor for generations of immigrants—and the arrival of asylum seekers today is no exception,” said Comptroller Brad Lander. “In the last twenty months, New York City has readily received over 100,000 asylum seekers at a time when we did not know how we would recover from losing nearly half a million residents during the pandemic. Rather than shutting the door on new New Yorkers, our City, State, and federal government must work together to keep the tradition of embracing immigration.”

Below are some key excerpts from the fact sheet: 

FACT: Immigrants, regardless of status, strengthen our economy as workers, entrepreneurs, tax payers, and consumers. Immigrant New Yorkers are more likely to be employed, are more likely to create jobs by starting a business, and contribute billions of dollars to our New York economy in spending power and tax revenue. In 2021, immigrant New Yorkers paid $61 billion dollars in taxes and constituted $138 billion dollars in spending power; undocumented immigrants contributed $30.8 billion in total taxes nationally, including $18.6 billion in federal income taxes and $12.2 billion in state and local taxes. 

FACT: Immigrants drive population and workforce growth. New immigration helps the economy compensate for declining birth rates, slow population growth, and residents moving out of the city. New York City lost over 100,000 workers since February 2020. Immigrant workers do not take jobs away from native-born workers, instead, immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurs than native-born Americans and actually create more jobs than they take.

FACT: Seeking asylum is lawful immigration. The right to seek asylum in the U.S. is enshrined under federal law. 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(1). This right to seek safety from persecution is also guaranteed under international law. The first step in seeking asylum, as required by statute, is arriving in the United States, regardless of how they arrived. Many of the asylum seekers who have reached New York City come from countries, such as Venezuela, Mauritania, and Haiti, where the U.S. Department of State has identified prevalent human rights abuses, including torture, false imprisonment, and slavery.

FACT: The federal government can (and should) do more to help local governments and asylum seekers. The federal government can provide more funding and flexibility in reimbursing localities for the cost of providing shelter, case management, workforce development, and legal services. In addition, providing more lawful immigration pathways can also provide more access to work authorizations. Between 2022 and 2023, illegal crossings from Ukrainians, Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans sharply decreased after lawful pathways to entry through humanitarian parole were implemented for those countries.

FACT: The U.S. and New York City have seen periods of comparable or greater growth in our immigration populations to the current period of asylum seeker arrivals in New York City. The period from 2012 to 2022 saw slower growth in the immigrant share of the population than the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s and 1970s. In the 1990s, the U.S. immigrant population  grew exponentially from 19 million to over 30 million between 1990-2000. The undocumented population in New York City has declined over the last decade. Approximately 476,000 undocumented immigrants lived in NYC in 2019, the most recent year data is available, as compared to 504,000 in 2018.

FACT: The world is currently experiencing a global refugee crisis – more people have been forced to leave their home countries than ever before. Globally, over 100 million people have been displaced due to armed conflict, instability, and violence, including over 6 million Ukrainians displaced by Russian invasion and over 7 million Venezuelans displaced by economic collapse, and about 6 million out of the over 7 million displaced Venezuelans have migrated to other Latin American or Caribbean countries.

FACT: New York City is the greatest immigrant city the world has ever seen. New York City’s population increased by over 1.3 million people from 1900 to 1910 due to immigration. In just one day in 1907, over 11,000 immigrants entered New York City through Ellis Island. Today, with twice as many people than in 1907, New York City welcomes up to 600 migrants a day seeking shelter. Over 3 million New York City residents are immigrants, comprising about 40 percent of our city’s population.

Read the full fact sheet here. 

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