Abstract
Today’s digital media industrial complex provides a cacophony of misinformation about immigrants. Although there has always been plenty of misinformation about immigrants in the traditional press and mainstream discourse, the rise of social media, artificial intelligence, and weakened institutional oversight has created a system where emotionally charged and ideologically driven content spreads more quickly and widely than ever. Narratives portraying immigrants as cultural, economic, and security threats are amplified, both through deliberate disinformation and through social media platform incentives that value engagement over accuracy. A steady flow of misleading information creates uncertainty and blurs the line between expertise and popular opinion. Not only is the public confused about the facts, but social media also reshapes how immigration is understood and debated, as misinformation creates and reinforces moral panics about immigration.
Into this morass walk Ernesto Castañeda and Carina Cione in their new book, Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions. Their goal is to “increase readers’ knowledge about the myths we cover and their ability to critically analyze and engage with information regarding immigration” (p. 2). This work is simultaneously ambitious and optimistic. Similar to work on immigrants and refugees by other researchers who rely on empirical evidence and data, the authors work hard to counter prevailing narratives that depict international migrants as harmful to receiving countries, showing instead how they more typically strengthen them. From the border wall to refugees to Brexit, Castañeda and Cione cover a lot of ground.
I found all the chapters engaging and informative. Drawing from the vast literature on immigration, the authors effectively challenge several persistent myths. Chapter Four underscores the fact that while many English-only legislation advocates in the United States assume that immigrants are reluctant to learn English, in fact immigrants overwhelmingly want to learn and often invest significant time and resources to learn English. Chapter Ten extends this discussion by examining how immigrants integrate into western societies, even when host-country policies create formidable barriers.
In Chapter Five, the authors take on the enduring misconception that immigrants are disproportionately dependent on welfare in the United States, noting both the legal restrictions that limit immigrant access to many programs and the empirical evidence showing that they use such benefits less frequently than the native-born. Likewise, Chapter Six dispels the notion that remittances harm host economies, pointing out that in the United States they actually “increase foreigners’ ability to purchase American goods” (p. 153). Chapter Seven turns to refugees, challenging the dominant narrative of a refugee “crisis” in the United States and Europe. One of the book’s particular strengths lies in its comparative approach: many chapters situate U.S. debates within a broader international context, culminating in a full chapter on Brexit and immigration politics in the United Kingdom (Chapter 9).
For me, the strongest chapters are the opening three, which address the southern border, border walls, and crime, respectively. In Chapter One, the authors draw on data to demonstrate convincingly that the U.S. southern border is not only relatively safe but also is layered in misinformation and disinformation. A story from the first Trump administration makes that point:
“The former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney stated that authorities ‘had arrested 17,000 criminals at the southern border’ in 2018. Lori Robertson from FactCheck.org disproves Mulvaney’s allegation by referencing data supplied by CBP. That year the Border Patrol apprehended ‘6,259 criminal aliens’ . . . and only 3—or 0.048 percent of those apprehended—had previous convictions for homicide or manslaughter” (p. 18).
The first chapter also stresses the fact that the southern border is generally safe for White Americans, but that Latine citizens and undocumented immigrants experience greater vulnerability and are frequently targeted by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.
In Chapter Two, Castañeda and Cione emphasize that most immigrants enter the United States legally, noting that “66 percent of immigrants became undocumented by entering legally and overstaying their visas, whereas 34 percent crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally” (p. 52). They further explain that many undocumented migrants working in agriculture would prefer to return home during the off-season, but the increasing militarization of the border has made circular migration virtually impossible. Such militaristic and restrictive border policies contribute to the very rise in the undocumented population that contemporary policies purport to prevent. In the end, their analysis makes clear that a border wall is not only unnecessary but also counterproductive to the goals it claims to achieve.
Chapter Three addresses the persistent myth that immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, commit crimes at higher rates than the native-born. Study after study has found little empirical support for this claim, yet the mischaracterization of immigrant crime remains politically useful and deeply embedded in public discourse. The authors also highlight a robust body of research showing that as the proportion of immigrants in a community increases, crime rates tend to decline. Although they acknowledge that the relationship may not be strictly causal, they are clear that immigrants are not driving crime rates upward. Castañeda and Cione further situate this discussion within the broader politics of fear and crimmigration, highlighting how mass incarceration and inflammatory rhetoric sustain the myth despite decades of contrary evidence. In doing so, the chapter offers a valuable corrective to sensationalist narratives by emphasizing the enduring gap between data and political discourse on immigration and public safety.
The challenge with Immigration Realities is that I am not sure I share Castañeda and Cione’s optimism. Will this book shift the tone of the national debate on immigration? Probably not. Yet it is a vital and impressively executed contribution to the burgeoning literature on contemporary immigration. These are difficult times for reasoned discussion and cutting through the noise of political expediency or even the broader ecosystem of outrage and oversimplification will not be easy. Still, even a pessimist can hope that careful, evidence-based scholarship like this can find its way into the conversation. The insights drawn from the vast immigration literature assembled here are corrective and are too important to remain confined to the pages of academia, even though the current political climate makes it hard for such respect for evidence and nuance to be heard.