The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it--while forcing everybody
to assimilate their own alienation--takes cover under dubious and sinister masks
----Norman Manea

As we enter into Day 18 of the government shutdown in the US, ostensibly over the issue of building a wall to limit undocumented immigration, I had to take a stab at the impasse.

I drew the following insights from publicly available datasets from the Pew Research Center by loading them into popular data visualization tools.


The Number of Undocumented Immigrants is actually Falling The number of undocumented immigrants overall has actually fallen over the last decade. The sharpest decline in undocumented immigrants actually came from Mexico, followed by other regions - South America, Europe, and Canada. While the number of undocumented immigrants from Central America and Asia has increased, overall, we’ve seen a net decrease.


See above. Mexico, EU and Canada are seeing changes below zero, which means negative.

Central America is positive, which means greater than zero. Negative means less immigration.

Positive means more immigration. Simple, right?


Now let’s take a closer look at the individual countries, besides Mexico, that are the largest contributors.

We see a decrease across the board. The only increase in demonstrable undocumented immigration

comes only from the Central American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and India.

But the increase is not from Mexico.


The Number of Undocumented Immigrants in the Workforce has Decreased
If you want to see how immigrants have affected the workforce, let's look at those numbers. You can see the total labor force has increased over the past decade. Over the past ten years, the number of US born and lawful immigrants in the workforce has increased, whereas the number of undocumented immigrants has actually decreased.


Undocumented immigrants make up a modest 5% of the overall workforce, which is still very much dominated by US-born workers.



How Do Different States Stack Up?

Let's look at how immigrant populations are impacting individual states. A quick analysis shows most

undocumented immigrants end up in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.


In fact, each of these immigrant heavy states have experienced a decrease in immigrant populations

over the last decade, as can be seen from the chart below. Some states like Maryland and

Massachusetts did see increases, but these were outweighed by the overall decreases found in other states.


So Mr. President, when looking at the above data, it’s hard to see how a border wall will reverse a trend that’s already in decline!

Disagree? Show us your counter dataset. Only facts, no rhetoric please.

Speaking of facts, here’s what the government shutdown is really doing to the economy:

  • Key economic reports consumed by financial analysts are getting delayed leading to speculation in economic forecasting. Possible slowdown in economic growth looms.
  • Scientific labs across the country are being emptied, disrupting the flow of grant money, some of which is time sensitive
  • Higher education for graduate students is affected as grant proposals from NSF and NASA don’t come through in time
  • The shutdown is affecting about 800,000 federal workers, many of whom will miss their first paycheck this week, and who owe a combined $249 million in monthly mortgage payments
  • Farmers who rely on subsidies are not getting paid
  • As many as 39,000 federally backed mortgage applications have already been delayed

Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food benefits for about 40 million people, will run out of cash by the end of the month if this continues.
Do I really need to go on?

There is solid research which concludes that low-skill workers earn $0.36 in per capita income for every $7 the government spends on walling off Mexico. Terrible ROI, if that matters. Additionally, the border wall expansion conclusively harms both Mexican workers and high-skill US workers.

The holidays are over. We’re all back to business. The government should be, too.