Pew Research deceives about number of immigrants in the U.S.

Pew Research Center falsely claims [1] that there are "almost 34 million lawful immigrants" in the U.S., yet they include 19.8 million naturalized citizens in that number. Immigrants and citizens are disjoint sets: someone can't be an immigrant and a citizen at the same time.

In the U.S., a citizen is a citizen, no matter if they were born here or were naturalized. There's no such thing as an immigrant-citizen. What Pew is doing is like claiming there are X million law students in the U.S., but including in that number practicing lawyers.

Pew is greatly padding the numbers of immigrants in order to push their agenda: without adding in naturalized citizens, their "almost 34 million" figure would shrink to 14 million. They claim there are 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. (a figure some would credibly dispute). Comparing 14 million to 11 million just doesn't have the punch of comparing 34 million to 11 million.

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[1] In "Shifting Public Views on Legal Immigration Into the U.S. / Many unaware that most immigrants in the U.S. are here legally" (people-press · org/2018/06/28/shifting-public-views-on-legal-immigration-into-the-u-s) Pew says:

Fewer than half of Americans know that most immigrants in the U.S. are here legally. Just 45% of Americans say that most immigrants living in the U.S. are here legally; 35% say most immigrants are in the country illegally, while 6% volunteer that about half are here legally and half illegally and 13% say they don’t know. In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, lawful immigrants accounted for about three-quarters of the foreign-born population in the United States.

Those involved with the report are Carroll Doherty (Director, Political Research; @carrolldoherty), Jocelyn Kiley (Associate Director, Political Research; @jocelynkiley), and Alec Tyson (@alec_h_tyson), Bradley Jones, Baxter Oliphant, Hannah Fingerhut, Hannah Hartig, Amina Dunn, John LaLoggia, Claire Sukumar,

The poll links to "5 key facts about U.S. lawful immigrants" by DVera Cohn (@allthingscensus; pewresearch · org/fact-tank/2017/08/03/5-key-facts-about-u-s-lawful-immigrants).