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Center For Immigration Studies Calls Out WaPo For Not Correcting Article After A Week

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Neetu Arnold Contributor
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Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian called out The Washington Post on Sunday for not correcting facts in an article.

“Nearly a week after being debunked by @wwwCISorg [CIS], this egregiously mistaken WaPo piece by @ahauslohner [Abigail Hauslohner] & @abtran [Andrew Ba Tran] still hasn’t been retracted or corrected,” Krikorian tweeted Sunday.

“How Trump is changing the face of legal immigration,” written on July 2, was debunked by CIS on July 9 due to what it called a “flawed analysis.”

“A recent story in The Washington Post [sic] concluding that the Trump administration is deliberately suppressing immigration, especially from Muslim-majority countries, is based on a deeply flawed analysis that included statistics for only half of all recent immigrant admissions,” according to the CIS analysis. “As a result, the Post’s numbers and conclusions are way off — so far off that the story should be retracted and rewritten.”

WaPo only analyzed data regarding immigrants who were newcomers to the country via immigrant visas issued abroad and excluded those who obtained their green cards after living in the U.S. for some time, CIS added.

“It simply is not appropriate to draw conclusions about legal immigration flows by looking at immigrant visa issuances alone,” stated CIS.

The organization debunked seven claims reported by WaPo. (RELATED: Nikki Haley Shames Washington Post Into Issuing Correction After Spreading False Reporting About Her)

“Legal immigration from all Muslim-majority countries is on track to fall by nearly a third,” one claim by the WaPo said. CIS, however, said immigration from Muslim-majority countries varies every year due to authorizations from Congress, not from the executive branch.

CIS also disagreed with the claim, “It is unclear whether part of the drop in immigrant visas reflects declining interest in immigrating to the United States.” It referenced a Department of State report on immigrant visa applicants as of Nov. 1, 2017, and discovered nearly 4 million people were on the immigrant visa waitlist.

Those on the waitlist were already sponsored by employers or family members, and some have been on the list for over a decade.

“This, together with continued high levels of illegal immigration, demonstrates in a very obvious way that there is continued strong interest in immigrating to the United States, regardless of who is in the White House,” stated CIS.

CIS also pointed out that legal immigration from five Muslim-majority countries on the travel ban list would not drop by “81 percent” in 2018, as reported by WaPo.

It should not be shocking that immigration from these countries would show declining numbers in 2018 because the number of immigrants admitted in 2016 was “atypically high,” according to CIS.

“In 2016, there were 38,700 admissions from the five named countries. In contrast, the average number of admissions from 2009-2015 was only 27,000,” the statement read. “The difference is accounted for almost entirely by a one-time spike of about 10,000 immigrants from Yemen in 2016.”

“This is classic cherry-picking of data on the part of the Post reporters,” reported CIS.

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