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November 01, 2007
Your World in Charts: Immigrants and the Uninsured Edition
Like Kay Steiger, I do love it when I can post a graph to prove my points. And so I'm going to steal the one she found! You occasionally hear conservatives argue that the problems of the uninsured in this country are entirely due to immigration. No immigrants, no increases in the uninsured. I've shot this point up before, but EPI helpfully graphed the debate, showing what would have happened to the population of the uninsured had immigration been frozen in 2000.
As you can see, freeze immigration and the 2.1% increase in the uninsured population becomes a...1.9% increase in the uninsured population. Which equals out to 5.7 million more Americans uninsured.
November 1, 2007 in Charts | Permalink
Comments
Does it count their non-immigrant kids?
Posted by: Alex | Nov 1, 2007 11:13:27 AM
Do you have any examples of a conservative saying immigration is a cause of the increase in uninsured? Can't say I have EVER heard anyone make that point before. Now I have heard numerous conservatives say ILLEGAL immigration has an effect but you can in no way honestly confuse those two statements. Kay properly says conservatives blame illegal immigrants, why did you drop the illegal? Now if you go to the original chart, made up by the author of the post by the way, she clearly refers to legal immigrants. Her chart is based on Census Bureau data, are you claiming the US Census Bureau has accurate data on the number of illegal immigrants in this country? Seems they always quote some pretty wide ranges which make it hard to make assumptions down to .002.
According to this chart the difference in the number of uninsured is .2%, .002, or roughly 600,000 individuals. The census bureau estimates 850,000 new illegal immigrants each year for a 6 year total of 5.1 million. 600K is 11% of 5.1 million. If immigrants are 20% higher uninsured that would seem to mean 20% of non immigrants are doubled insured? How do you have a negative uninsured rate? This chart and your assumptions don't even begin to add up. You couldn't even kill the straw man of your own making.
Posted by: Nate O | Nov 1, 2007 12:55:19 PM
Do you have any examples of a conservative saying immigration is a cause of the increase in uninsured? Can't say I have EVER heard anyone make that point before. Now I have heard numerous conservatives say ILLEGAL immigration has an effect but you can in no way honestly confuse those two statements. Kay properly says conservatives blame illegal immigrants, why did you drop the illegal? Now if you go to the original chart, made up by the author of the post by the way, she clearly refers to legal immigrants. Her chart is based on Census Bureau data, are you claiming the US Census Bureau has accurate data on the number of illegal immigrants in this country? Seems they always quote some pretty wide ranges which make it hard to make assumptions down to .002.
According to this chart the difference in the number of uninsured is .2%, .002, or roughly 600,000 individuals. The census bureau estimates 850,000 new illegal immigrants each year for a 6 year total of 5.1 million. 600K is 11% of 5.1 million. If immigrants are 20% higher uninsured that would seem to mean 20% of non immigrants are doubled insured? How do you have a negative uninsured rate? This chart and your assumptions don't even begin to add up. You couldn't even kill the straw man of your own making.
Posted by: Nate O | Nov 1, 2007 12:55:58 PM
Whats the definition of "freeze immigration" here? Does it mean "keeping the number of new arrivals in 2006 the same as it was in 2000", or does it mean "no immigrants entering the country since 2000?"
If its the latter, this is a strong argument; if the former, not as much....
Posted by: Spike | Nov 1, 2007 1:08:17 PM
Spike, it's neither: the hypothetical is that the percentage of immigrants in the population remained unchanged. (You could have found this out for yourself by following 2 links to reach the original source.)
Posted by: JBL | Nov 1, 2007 1:12:39 PM
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