I’m Mr. Beat I teach social studies,
and most of my videos are explainer-type videos meant to inform and educate. If I ever do make a
video that's an opinion video, I let you know up front that it's an opinion video.
The Dude: Well...that's like your opinion, man. Exactly.
I also get things wrong sometimes, but I do my best to get things right. My agenda is the truth.
Some YouTube channels have a different agenda.
PragerU, which is short for Prager University, is an organization that creates short,
animated videos to promote a conservative agenda. So what does PragerU’s version of
“conservative” look like? Well, their website says they believe in “economic and religious freedom,
a strong military that protects our allies, and in the religious
values that inform Western civilization, also known as Judeo-Christian values.”
So I guess religious freedom is cool to them but they like Jewish and Christian values better?
Anyway, the conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager and his colleague Allen Estrin
created it in 2010 to fight what they perceived a “liberal bias” in the American education system.
It’s propaganda. PragerU is straight up propaganda.
Their mission is not to inform and educate, but to indoctrinate. And honestly I'm ok with
propaganda. I'm totally fine with that. The problem with PragerU
is that they present themselves as a legitimate educational institution.
On their YouTube channel, they state “PragerU is an online video resource
promoting knowledge and clarity on life's biggest and most interesting topics.
We gather some of the world's best thinkers and distill their best ideas into free,
5-minute videos on things ranging from history and economics to science and happiness.”
My point for reading that is that I’ve found a lot of people don’t know
they make propaganda videos. Unsuspecting folks may think they are simply an educational channel,
when they are not. When I first came across them, I know I thought that. And PragerU is highly
influential, especially to younger folks. Their videos have billions of views. They also recently
started a program to try to get their videos in more social studies curriculums. Craig Strazzeri,
the chief marketing officer of PragerU, said thousands of educators have already signed up,
adding: “Ideally, every school in America would show PragerU videos
in the classroom on a regular basis to help educate the next generation.”
Educate? Like I said, more like “indoctrinate.”
If you Google “PragerU Debunked,” you’ll get thousands of videos and articles debunking
PragerU videos. Often however, the videos are like 30 minutes long,
because of how much bull crap the debunking videos have to call out.
But that is precisely what I’m going to do in this video. I’m going to fact check a
five-and-a-half minute video PragerU made called “A Nation of Immigrants,” and hopefully do it
in well less than 30 minutes, although this introduction has already been way too long.
“A Nation of Immigrants” seems harmless at first, but the more you critically think about it,
oh my it is so misleading. Hosted by Michelle Malkin, who is a daughter of immigrants herself,
the video’s main claim is that :39 “The United States
still maintains the most generous immigration policies in the world.”
That argument is misleading. In absolute numbers,
yes, the United States has more immigrants than any other country.
However, a lower percentage of its population are immigrants compared to many other countries.
Here’s a sample: New Zealand - 22.3% of its population
was born in a foreign country In Canada, it’s 21.3%
Sweden - 20.0% Ireland - 17.1%
Germany - 15.7% So what about the United States? 14%
Well based on that data, you could argue that New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, and Germany
all have more generous immigration policies compared to the United States.
:56 “The United States has more
immigrants as a percentage of its total population than any time since 1890.”
She’s right, but context is definitely needed here.
For a big chunk of the previous century, immigration levels were kept very low due
to xenophobia. When the American government DID allow immigration during that time,
it allowed immigrants to only come from northern European countries.
For most of the early history of the United States, it basically had no immigration
laws. Borders were open, and anyone who could afford the boat ticket could enter the country.
That all began to change in the late 1800s, when the first major immigration laws were
passed to exclude criminals, poor folks, and those classified as “lunatics” or “idiots.”
Then of course, there was the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act, which went into effect on May 6,
1882, which banned Chinese workers. The Chinese Exclusion Act was actually the only law to prevent
all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States.
Still, most immigrants could easily enter the country, and that’s why sooo many came in the
late 1800s. It wasn’t until immigrants started coming from Southern and Eastern Europe in mass
numbers that Americans started freaking out. In the 1920s, the U.S. government began quotas
on immigration, prioritizing Northern and Western Europeans over other groups.
Between the 1920s and 1950s, residents of only three countries—Ireland,
Germany and the United Kingdom—got nearly 70% of the quota visas available to enter the U.S. and
immigration dropped to some of the lowest levels we have ever seen in American history.
The U.S. government turned down millions, like the Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany in
the years right before and during World War Two. Many later ended up dying during the Holocaust.
In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act,
which made immigration more fair and open. It undid the preference for Northern Europe,
putting all countries on a level playing field, and opened up immigration to the
rest of the world. This is still the system the country has today.
1:06 -- “176 different languages are spoken among students in the New York City School System”
Did you know there are at least 430 languages actively spoken in the United States? 167 of
those are Native American languages. The United States has no official language,
and there has always been language diversity within the United States. Immigrants today also
speak English at a greater rate than immigrants 100 years ago. 84% of recent immigrants speak
English, compared with only about half who came through during the late 1800s.
1:19 -- “American grants permanent residence to 1,000,000 people every year”
One million sounds like a lot, but remember America’s population is over 330 million. 86%
of Americans were born in the United States, and 3.8 million Americans are born there each year.
Family-based immigration is part of its current immigration system, and is aimed to help immigrant
families immigrate together, because maintaining a family unit is better for both the immigrants
and society at large. However, this system is often attacked by anti-immigrant groups.
1:30 - 1:55 -- Chain Migration Chart - “3.45 Additional Relatives each”
Grab your blanket, because it’s about to get scary. Ok,
first of all, most immigrants don’t sponsor a relative. The research she is referencing
is from a study called Family Sponsorship and Late-Age Immigration in Aging America. In it,
the authors estimate that each “initiating immigrant” eventually sponsors 3.45 immigrants,
on average. But what is an “initiating immigrant?” The first person in a family
unit to come to the United States. So that 3.45 number comes from the entire chain.
Say an immigrant worker sponsors their spouse. Well, their spouse could sponsor their Mother
who could then sponsor her brother. The Mother and her brother both count as part
of the original employment immigrant’s chain. And so, the mother is not creating a new chain.
So that 3.45 number isn’t so crazy now,
is it? PragerU is actually showing a family tree where one person is apparently
sponsoring 18 people, which again, is over five times the average number.
It’s also not a simple process to sponsor a loved one. If you want to help your family
member immigrate to the United States, you have to pay a $535 filing fee and provide proof that
you can financially support both yourself and your relative without government assistance.
Once your relative gets to the United States, you are legally responsible for supporting them,
and if you don’t the government will fine you. In the current immigration system,
folks hoping to come to the United States must go through an intensive vetting process,
which includes multiple background checks, medical examinations, and in-person interviews with
American Immigration Officials. The review process lasts an average of almost 10 months.
But many immigrants have to wait much longer before coming to the United States. Let’s go back
to the earlier example, with the spouse sponsoring their mother who then sponsors her brother. The
spouse would have to become a naturalized citizen first, which takes a minimum of five
years. It would then take at least a year for the mother to get her green card, and then she would
have to wait another five years to be naturalized so she could apply to sponsor her brother. Then,
they would wait for at least 13 years or longer for a green card for her brother. So basically,
the brother wouldn’t be able to become a U.S. citizen for at least 24 years after the spouse
first came to the country. Have I lost you yet? See this is why PragerU videos are so short.
They leave out all the nuance, all the complicated stuff, all the critical thinking. Anyway...
2:05 -- “Another 3,500,000”
No, you don’t get to count those immigrants twice. It’s still just
a million a year. They're counted the same. It’s not an “additional” number.
2:10 -- “In addition, an estimated 100,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, people who
claim to be fleeing political or personal strife abroad, enter the country annually.”
No. Again, you don’t get to count those immigrants thrice. They are still part of that original
one million a year statistic. And refugees also go through a very rigorous vetting process.
2:38 -- 500,000 Diversity Visa Lottery - “Don’t need a high school education”
There you go again. No, you don’t get to count those immigrants quadrice.
Wait, I don’t think that’s a word. Yet. But yeah, it’s still just a million a year. Oh,
and plus, the number she actually gives is for 10 years. The U.S. grants only around
50,000 Diversity Visas each year and again, that’s part of that original 1 million number.
Michelle: Diversity visa applicants don't need a high school education, job skills, or pretty much anything.
Yeah that’s bull crap. Diversity Visa applicants absolutely do
have to have at least a high school education or at least two years of
work experience in a job that requires at least two years of training or experience.
3:07 -- “This nonstop flow of new legal immigrants, based on family ties instead of skills, abilities, and allegiance to American values”
Well, it’s funny she says that, because the average new immigrant is more likely
to have a college degree than the average American citizen. Currently, 15% of American nurses, 20% of
American surgeons, and 22% of Americans working in STEM fields were born in a foreign country.
Getting rid of family sponsorship would actually lead to less highly-skilled
immigrants coming to the United States. While it is true that family-based immigrants
tend to start out at more lower skilled jobs when they first come to the country, in the long
run immigrants achieve higher mobility and success than those same employment-based immigrants. While
many folks like Malkin worry that family-based immigrants are a drain on the resources of the
country, there is no proof of that. If anything, the responsibility for family-based immigration
costs is not on the American taxpayer, but the individuals sponsoring their relatives.
3:35 -- 11 million, but that number never seems to change
Oh but it does change, Michelle. The undocumented population
peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million and is less than 10.5 million today.
4:00 -- “Building a high tech border barrier would help stem this flow”
Despite spending over $3.5 billion each year on border security,
there is no evidence that high tech border security would actually
help end illegal immigration. Most undocumented immigrants came to the United States legally
and just overstayed their visas. In fact, the militarization of the United States border is
actually what made the problem of undocumented immigration much worse by turning what had
once been a seasonal in/out flow of workers into a permanent undocumented immigration.
And of course she ends it with a bunch of platitudes that everyone agrees with,
so essentially it just turns into a straw man attack.
But overall, just remember that some of what she said was actually true. Some of what she said was
straight up false. Most of what she said was just misleading. So hopefully watching this long video gave you some
more context and nuance. You were paying attention, weren’t you.
Jacob! (snaps fingers) Jacob! Pay attention!
This video was made with the support of Define American.
Whew. That was a lot of work just trying to fact check a five-minute PragerU video,
which is why I want to thank the organization Define American for their help
making this video. So what do YOU think about immigration?
Are YOU an immigrant? If so, I wanna hear from you. Give me a shout out and a holler in the comments below and thank you so much for watching.