Immigration was perhaps the most complex, debated, and controversial topic of the 2016 United States Presidential Election. In fact, “over 60% of registered voters reported that immigration was an important factor on how they voted” (https://ballotpedia.org/2016_presidential_candidates_on_immigration). Donald Trump, in particular, used the topic as a center piece for his presidential campaign and took a drastic stand on the issue. Ultimately, Trump set forth on a plan to cut down the number of immigrants allowed into the US, particularly from Latin America, and aims to do so by building a wall across the southern border of the US.
In his arguments, Trump continuously stated he would fix the “lax regulations” currently implemented under the Obama administration, and reverse the “sky-rocketing” number of illegal immigrants coming to the US from Mexico. Trump based his viewpoint on popular belief and negative connotations rather than real data and scientific facts, as I will discuss below.
When researching immigration during the 2016 election, I came across a very interesting and useful article that essentially disproved Donald Trump’s arguments on immigration. The article includes two very powerful graphs which relay clear and concise conclusions on actual immigration numbers in the US.
Admittedly, at first glance this graph does highlight the spike in immigration numbers from Mexico to the US (although during the 90’s and not Obama’s administration). This graph is what most Americans saw during immigration debates and what Trump used in his arguments on how numbers are sky-rocketing.
One could simply argue Trump with only this graph, because it is clear that even though there was a jump in immigration, the numbers have already decreased over 3 –fold and continue to decline. However, a better opposition to Trump is the following graph that the article made which adjusts immigration rates by percentage of population rather than simply raw numbers.
The graph above gives viewers a more accurate impact of immigration numbers. By adjusting for population, the “sky-rocket” numbers are insignificant compared to other immigration waves we have had in the past. The number of immigrants today per population is only about .5%, which gives viewers a much different feel than raw numbers of 3,000,000. By showing both visualizations, the author has created a simple, yet conclusive analysis of the real immigration situation in the US. The wave already smoothed out by the year 2010, therefore proving drastic measures which Trump is proposing are completely unnecessary.
I chose this source for the Blog post because I found these graphs to be very successful in their presentation. It is amazing how simply changing the metric from sum to percentage the results can change so drastically. In addition, these graphs convey results that contradict the most powerful people in our country and half our population. It is so easy to fall prey to misconceptions of data when the topic is so controversial.
http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/