PolitiFact vs Your Lyin' Eyes on the immigration invasion

On Sept. 6, 2022 PolitiFact published an item titled "A surprising number of Americans believe these false claims about immigrants. Here are the facts."

We have a favorite among the supposedly false claims believed by a surprising number of Americans.

"There is no invasion at the southern border"

No invasion at the southern border? Tell us more, PolitiFact.

More than half of Americans surveyed by NPR/Ipsos believe it is completely or somewhat true that the "U.S. is experiencing an invasion at the southern border."

But many immigrants crossing the border illegally turn themselves into Border Patrol agents on purpose, to ask for asylum, Brown said. 

"That is not behavior that you would really attribute to an invader," Brown said. She said that usually, the term invasion is used to describe a concerted effort by a country to forcibly enter another country to take it over.

Such reasoning does not belong in fact-checking. On the contrary, the logic PolitiFact accepts belongs as far from fact-checking as possible.

Here's PolitiFact's supposed logic: If the expert says "invasion" usually means one country making a concerted effort to forcibly enter another to take it over, then "invasion" means one country making a concerted effort to forcibly enter another country to take it over. For PolitiFact, it then follows that Americans viewing a tide of illegal immigration at the southern border incorrectly see it as an invasion.

At least PolitiFact declined to follow the lead of its source, NPR/Ipsos, in calling the term "invasion" racist.

Hopefully the definition from Webster's New World College Dictionary, supposedly a standard for U.S. journalists (we're using the fourth edition) can help clear things up:

 

in-va-sion ... n. ... an invading or being invaded; specif., a) an entering or being entered by an attacking military force b) an intrusion or infringement

Is there any valid reason to suppose that illegal entry to the United States does not count as intrusion? Of course not. And any fact-checker unable to figure that out cannot be worthy of the name.

Regarding the invasion at the southern border, you can believe PolitiFact or your lyin' eyes.

Story Focus Shenanigans

We've pointed out for years that PolitiFact's story focus often determines the "Truth-O-Meter" rating at the end. Story focus shenanigans never go out of style at PolitiFact.

PolitiFact's method allows its fact checkers any number of ways to approach the same claim. A fact checker might focus on what the claimant said was meant. Or the fact checker could focus on how an audience might perceive the claim. One approach might lead to one "Truth-O-Meter" rating and another approach to a different "Truth-O-Meter" rating. There's no good evidence of any objective criteria guiding the process.

That brings us to two timely examples that help illustrate the phenomenon.

"Mostly False" for the Republican

President Biden set policy to allow essential workers who are undocumented to receive coronavirus vaccines. Why is Scalise's statement "Mostly False"? Apparently because American citizens who are not among the first groups eligible for the vaccine are not waiting to get the vaccine:

But, we wondered, does allowing this population access to the vaccine mean they are being invited to step in front of American citizens in the queue?

PolitiFact weasel-words "in the queue" so that Americans in low priority vaccine eligibility groups are not in the queue at all and are thus not skipped over when undocumented immigrants join those in the high priority groups.

You're not waiting for the vaccine if you're not in that narrowly-defined queue. PolitiFact quoted a Scalise spokesperson who explained his meaning. To no avail. Scalise received a "Mostly False" rating even though his statement was literally true taken in context, with "in the queue" encompassing all American citizens awaiting the vaccine.

"Half True" for the Democrat

Hocus-pocus-story-focus.

Pointedly, PolitiFact does not look at all the ways Mr. Biden's claim fails the test of truth. It does mention some of them, but breezes past such technicalities to point out that IF the person making below $15 per hour is the sole breadwinner in a family of four AND/OR lives in an area with high living expenses THEN they would fall below the poverty level.

How many of those earning less than $15 per hour meet those conditions? Well, if that was important then PolitiFact would have given us a number. Obviously it's not important. What we need to know is that under some conditions Biden's statement could be true. Those missing conditions count as missing context and that matches PolitiFact's definition of "Half True"!

Marvel at PolitiFact's rationalization:

A spokesman for Biden said he was referring to a family of four with one full-time income using the federal government’s poverty guideline, an explanation Biden didn’t include in the interview. Using that measurement, that family with a paycheck of $13 an hour would live below the poverty line. At $15 an hour, the same family would clearly be above the poverty line. So Biden was off by about a dollar, using the existing standards.

But experts said wages alone don’t tell the full story about whether a household lives in poverty. Other factors include child care and housing costs, for example, which can vary by geography. Generalizing a "poverty wage" to a specific number ignores the different circumstances that families face. Other experts said the federal definition of a poverty level is out of date and needs changing.

We rate this claim Half True.

You wonder why similar reasoning couldn't justify a "Half True" for Scalise?

Why do you hate science?

PolitiFact Texas punches "spin cycle" for Julián Castro

Is it possible left-leaning fact checkers still do not realize how their ideologies affect their work?

Consider PolitiFact Texas.

See what PolitiFact Texas did, there?

It presents an accurate hybrid paraphrase quotation of Castro asserting that Section 1325 of U.S. immigration law was put into place in 1929 by a segregationist. And promptly spins the Castro claim into the innocuous-but-loaded "When did it become a crime to cross the U.S.-Mexico border?"

Hilariously, the fact check spends most of its time examining facts other than when it became a crime to cross the border. Instead, it focuses on whether Section 1325 was enacted in 1929 (finding it was not) and whether the legislator who wrote the legislation was a segregationist.

PolitiFact Texas used nine paragraphs to address the segregationist past of Sen. Coleman Livingston Blease, the man who composed the language of an immigration bill in 1929.

Castro was evidently trying to make the point that he was trying to repeal a racist piece of legislation, racist because it was written by a segregationist. Castro was using the genetic fallacy on his audience. PolitiFact took no note of it, instead playing along by fact-checking whether Blease was a segregationist and finding a politically active expert to opine that the Blease-authored legislation was aimed at immigration from Mexico.

Such background does not help establish when it became a crime (at least under certain conditions) to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. It's background information that just happens (?) to support the subtext of Castro's claim.

As for Castro's implication that it was Blease who implemented the policy--as though a U.S. senator has that kind of power--well, that's just not the sort of thing that interests PolitiFact Texas.

In the end, PolitiFact Texas found it false that Blease authored the section of the immigration law Castro mentioned.

But why should that stand in the way of a favorable "Mostly True" rating?

PolitiFact's summary conclusion (bold emphasis added):

Castro said Section 1325 immigration policy, which makes it a crime to enter the country illegally, was "put into place in 1929, by a segregationist."

Technically Blease — a white supremicist [sic] who advocated for segregationist policies and lynching —  was not the author of the statute on illegal entry into the United States as it exists in today’s immigration code. 

But it was the first policy criminalizing all unlawful entry at the nation's southern border, and is considered the foundation of the 1952 policy that  evolved into today's Section 1325.

We rate this claim Mostly True.

Technically false, therefore "Mostly True."

That's how PolitiFact rolls. That's how PolitiFact Texas rolls.

It's spin, not fact-checking. Castro did not assert that the criminalization policy started in 1929. Castro asserted that Section 1325 was put into place in 1929.

Fact checkers should prove capable of noticing the difference. And keeping the spin out of their fact checks.

PolitiFact's Liberal Tells for $400, Alex

When PolitiFact released the results of a language inventory it commissioned on itself, we were not surprised that the researchers found no clear evidence of biased language. PolitiFact's bias is mostly found in its choice of stories accompanied by bias in the execution of the fact checks.

But ...

On Oct. 31, 2018 PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan published an article on the top election issues for 2018 and promptly stepped in it:

PolitiFact has been monitoring and fact-checking the midterm campaigns of 2018 in races across the country. We’ve seen common themes emerge as the Democrats and Republicans clash. Here’s a look at what we’ve found to be the top 10 storylines of the 2018 contests. (We provide short summaries of our fact-checks here; links will take you to longer stories with detailed explanations and primary sources.)

1. Fear of immigration

We'll explain to Holan (and the audience) the right way to identify immigration as an election issue without employing biased language:

1. Immigration

It's pretty easy.

Use "Fear of immigration" and the language communicates a lean to the left. Something like "Inadequate border security" might communicate the opposite (no danger of that from PolitiFact!).

Others from Holan's list of 10 election topics may also qualify as biased language. But this one is the most obvious. "Fear of immigration" is how liberals imagine conservatives reach the conclusion that securing the border and controlling immigration count as good policy.

PolitiFact's claim to non-partisanship is a gloss.

PolitiFact masters the non sequitur

A non sequitur occurs when one idea does not follow from another.

A Jan. 23, 2018 fact check by PolitiFact's Miriam Valverde offers ample evidence that PolitiFact has mastered the non sequitur.

Valverde's fact check concerned a claim from a White House infographic*:

PolitiFact looked at whether it was true that immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers $300 billion annually. The careful reader will have noticed that the White House infographic did not claim that immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers $300 billion annually. It made two distinct claims, first that unskilled immigrants create a net fiscal deficit and second that current immigration policy puts U.S. taxpayers on the hook for as much as $300 billion.

Isn't it wonderful when supposedly non-partisan fact checkers create straw men?

As for what the White House actually claimed, yes the Washington Times reported there was one study--a thorough one--that said current immigration policy costs U.S. taxpayers as much as $296 billion annually.

We do not know the precise origin of that figure after looking for it in the study. Apparently PolitiFact also failed to find it and after mentioning the Times' report proceeded to use the study's figure of $279 billion for 2013. That figure was for the first of eight scenarios.

Was the $296 billion number an inflation adjustment? A population increase adjustment? A mistake? A figure representing one of the other groups? We don't know. But if the correct figure is $279 billion, $300 billion represents a liberal-but-common method of rounding. It could also qualify as an exaggeration of 8 percent.

What problem does PolitiFact find with the infographic (bold emphasis added)?

A consultant who contributed to the report told us that in 2013 the total fiscal burden -- average outlays minus average receipts multipled [sic] by 55.5 million individuals -- was $279 billion for the first generation of immigrants. But making a conclusion on that one figure is a mighty case of cherry-picking.

What?

What conclusion did the infographic draw that represents cherry picking?

That line from Valverde does not belong in a fact check without a clear example of the faulty cherry picking. And in this case there isn't anything. The fact check provides more information about the report, including some positives regarding immigrant populations (especially second-generation immigrants), but ultimately finds no concrete fault with the infographic.

PolitiFact's charge of cherry picking doesn't follow.

And PolitiFact's conclusion?

Our ruling

The White House claimed that "current immigration policy imposes as much as $300 billion annually in net fiscal costs on U.S. taxpayers."

A study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine analyzed the fiscal impact of immigration under different scenarios. Under some assumptions, the fiscal burden was $279 billion, but $43 billion in other scenarios.

The report also found that U.S.-born children with at least one foreign-born parent are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors, thanks in part to the spending by local governments on their education.

The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.

In the second paragraph PolitiFact says the fiscal burden amounted to $43 billion "in other scenarios." Put correctly, one scenario put the figure at $279 billion and two scenarios may have put the figure at $43 billion because the scenarios were nearly identical. The study looked at a total of eight scenarios, found here. It appears to us that scenario four may serve as the source of the $296 billion figure reported in the Washington Times.

Our conclusion? PolitiFact's fact check provides a left-leaning picture of the context of the Trump White House infographic. The infographic is accurate. It plainly states that it is picking out a high-end figure. It states it relies on one study for the figure.

The infographic, in short, provides readers alerts to the potential problems with the figure it uses.

That said, the $300 billion figure serves as a pretty good example of appealing to the audience's anchoring bias. Mentioning "$300 billion" predisposes the audience toward believing a similarly high figure regardless of other evidences. That's a legitimate gripe about the infographic, though one PolitiFact neglected to point out while fabricating its charge of "cherry-picking."


Afters

*I noticed ages ago that the Obama administration produced a huge number of misleading infographics. Maybe PolitiFact fact checked one of them?



Correction Jan. 31, 2018: Inserted the needed word "check" between "fact" and "provides" in the fourth paragraph from the end.

PolitiFact California "fact": Undocumented immigrants count as Americans

The secret formula for finding PolitiFact mistakes: Just look at what fact PolitiFact is checking, try to imagine how a biased liberal would flub the fact check, then look to see if that mistake occurred.

PolitiFact California makes this technique work like magic. Case in point:

We wondered if PolitiFact California and Gov. Brown count undocumented immigrants as "Californians." We wondered if PolitiFact California would even concern itself over who counts as a "Californian."

The answer? No. And PolitiFact California made its mistake even more fundamental by putting a twist on what Gov. Brown claimed. This was the statement Brown made from his 2017 state of the state address:

This is California, the sixth most powerful economy in the world. One out of every eight Americans lives right here and 27 percent – almost eleven million – were born in a foreign land.

Brown did not say 27 percent of "Californians" are foreign-born. In context, he said 27 percent of the Americans (U.S citizens) in California are foreign born. If Brown had referred to "Californians," the dictionary would have given him some cover. A resident of California can qualify as a "Californian."

But Merriam-Webster provides no such cover for the definition of "American":

Only one of the four definitions fits the context of Brown's claim. That is definition No. 3.

The problem for Brown and PolitiFact California? Both relied on Census Bureau data. The Census Bureau counts citizens and non-citizens in its population survey. About 3 million of California's population  (Kaiser Family Foundation estimates about 5 million) do not hold American citizenship and do not count as "American" by definition No. 3. Subtract 3 million from the number PolitiFact California used as the number of Californians, and subtract 3 million from the number of foreign-born California residents, and the percentage of foreign-born Americans in California (definition No. 3) comes up as 22 percent, not 27 percent.

If the true number of undocumented Californians is 5 million then the percentage drops below 18 percent.

Gov. Brown's figure is off by at least 5 percentage points, representing a percentage error of almost 23 percent. And PolitiFact California found it completely true:

Gov. Jerry Brown claimed in his State of the State Address that 27 percent of Californians, almost 11 million, "were born in a foreign land."

A 2015 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau verifies that statistic. Additionally, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, which studies the state’s immigration and demographic patterns, confirmed the census report is the best authority on California’s foreign born population.

We rate Brown's claim True.

---

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.

To us, this looks like a classic case of a journalist's liberal bias damping proper skepticism. This type of mistake was predictable. We predicted it. And PolitiFact California delivered it.

Tweezers or tongs?

We've noted before PolitiFact's inconsistency in its treatment of compound statements.  It's time to focus on a specific way that inconsistency can influence PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter.

We'll call this problem "tweezers or tongs" and illustrate it with a recent PolitiFact fact check of Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.):

"As a physician for over 30 years, I am well aware of the dangers infectious diseases pose. In fact, infectious diseases remain in the top 10 causes of death in the United States. … Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning."

[...]

The reality is that Ebola has only been found in Africa -- and experts agree that, given how the disease develops, the likelihood of children from Central America bringing it to the U.S. border is almost nonexistent. But most importantly for our fact-check, Gingrey’s office was unable to point to solid evidence that that Ebola has arrived in Western Hemisphere, much less the U.S. border. To the contrary, the CDC and independent epidemiologists say there is zero evidence that these migrants are carrying the virus to the border.

We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

It's tweezers this time.

Gingrey states that disease crossing the border via migration creates a concern.  He mentions reports of swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis crossing the border as examples of concern.  PolitiFact takes its tweezers and picks out "Ebola virus," and drops from consideration the other diseases in Gingrey's compound statement.

Let's review again PolitiFact's guidelines statement of principles:

We sometimes rate compound statements that contain two or more factual assertions. In these cases, we rate the overall accuracy after looking at the individual pieces.

Or sometimes PolitiFact will just settle on rating one piece of the compound statement.  It's up to PolitiFact, based on the whim of the editors.

Burying Gingrey's underlying point

Though we're focused mainly on PolitiFact's inconsistent handling of compound statements, it's hard to ignore another PolitiShenanigan in the Gingrey fact check.  PolitiFact sometimes takes a subject's underlying point into account when making a ruling.  And sometimes not.  In Gingrey's case, PolitiFact buried Gingrey's underlying point:

As a surge of unaccompanied children from Central America was arriving on the United States’ southern border this month, Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., expressed concern about the impact they could have on public health.

PolitiFact left out part of the story.  Yes, Gingrey was expressing concern about the potential spread of disease from human migration.  But he wasn't simply airing his concerns to the Centers for Disease Control, to whom he addressed the letter PolitiFact fact checked.  He was asking the CDC to assess the risk:

I request that the CDC take immediate action to assess the public risk posed by the influx of unaccompanied children and their subsequent transfer to different parts of the country.

PolitiFact claims "words matter."  Yet, contrary to PolitiFact's claim, Gingrey did not say migrants may be bringing Ebola virus through the U.S.-Mexico border.  Rather, he said it was troubling to hear reports of diseases, including Ebola virus, coming across the border.

Words matter to PolitiFact, we suppose, since one needs to know exactly how much twisting is needed to arrive at the desired "Truth-O-Meter" rating.