Stephen Miller Says Immigrants Make Traffic Worse, But Of Course Stephen Miller Is Wrong

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Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller loves himself a bully rant and ne'er misses a chance to state that Democrats are engaged successful a immense crippled to fto arsenic galore undocumented immigrants arsenic imaginable participate nan U.S. truthful they tin destruct Western nine and subjugate conservatives. And wreck our glorious acquisition system. And our glorious healthcare system. And jam our formerly sparkling cities pinch traffic.

Wait, what? Immigrants make postulation worse? Impoverished immigrants who travel to America, legally aliases illegally, and instantly effort to get down nan wheel? Miller threw this allegation into a database of grievances he spewed during a caller Fox News segment, arsenic big Jesse Watters — who has a lot much hairsbreadth than Miller, creating a weird split-screen opposition — remained reverently mute. If you've been regularly propagandized by right-wing media, nan declare sounds plausible: much immigrants intends much group driving intends much congestion. But actually, it doesn't.

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The taxable of migration and postulation congestion hasn't been profoundly researched, but it has surely been looked into. It doesn't return agelong to refute Miller's argument, specified arsenic it is, and to observe a fewer inconvenient truths. In 2012, RAND published nan results of a study successful nan United Kingdom that confirmed what astir group confronting nan mobility of immigration's effect connected postulation mightiness suspect: migrant recreation was "strongly associated pinch nan usage of non-car-driving modes" of transportation.

In nan U.S., researchers from Berkeley and Rutgers tackled nan rumor successful New Jersey and published their findings successful 2013. They wrote that immigrants "account for a important stock of each transit ridership, stepping and carpooling successful nan United States and are overmuch little apt than nan U.S.-born organization to ain and thrust individual automobiles." Later on, immigrants mightiness amended their lot, assimilate, and execute nan classical milestone of nan American dream by trading nan autobus for a car. But moreover then, they still thrust little than autochthonal residents.

When you excavation into nan information connected this subject, you besides observe that immigrants thin to cluster successful densely populated municipality areas wherever driving isn't necessary. That's a logical choice, peculiarly for low-income immigrants. If anything, they summation request for nationalist transit, though evidently not everywhere.

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In 2018, a paper from nan UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies connected declining public-transit ridership came retired and offered immoderate insights into immigrants and car ownership. This investigation did propose that Latino immigrants successful California were abandoning subways and buses astatine a accelerated clip arsenic they became successful capable to spend individual cars, but it noted that Asian immigrants were besides successful nan mix. The upshot present is that arsenic California's immigrants assimilate and prosper, sloppy of wherever they came from, they activity to get vehicles — like each different demographic group successful California. Less auto-centric U.S. regions astir apt show a different story.

This clip around, Miller was laying into immigrants from countries specified arsenic Haiti and Somalia, insisting that they were fleeing grounded societies and would (literally) trim to rubble nan U.S. civilization that existed earlier they arrived, and Democrats would past norm that rubble. No 1 is amazed by his reliable nastiness, but successful nan expansive strategy of migration successful nan West, his claims astir gridlock caused by migrants are weak.