Texas Governor Rick Perry wisely chose not to slug Mitt Romney at Tuesday's debate.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickperry/6005610000/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Rick Perry</a>/Flickr
The most dramatic* moment at Tuesday night’s GOP presidential debate came past the midway point, when Rick Perry and Mitt Romney clashed over illegal immigration. In addition to consistently referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals,” Romney went on to suggest that Perry’s record of job growth in Texas was comprised mostly of illegal immigrants. Romney cited a study showing that 81 percent of new jobs in Texas over the last few years went to undocumented workers.
But as Suzy Khimm explained, the study Romney is citing, from the Center for Immigration Studies, is flawed. Among other things:
Perryman points out that the study’s conclusions about newly arrived immigrants in Texas aren’t likely to hold true for the immigration population on the whole. By restricting its scope to immigrants who’ve arrived after 2007, the study doesn’t take into account any job losses by immigrants who came before 2007, he says. For example, if an immigrant who arrived after 2007 takes the job of a immigrant who came earlier, that still counts as a net gain in the study.
Another reason to be skeptical of CIS: It’s the same group that produced a report last March supporting the debunked “terror babies” theory. According to CIS, terrorists are coming to the United States illegally to have kids who will take advantage of their American citizenship to destroy America from within.
*And by dramatic, we mean, “the moment that prompted Rick Perry to actually, physically curl his lip.”
