CIS estimated that fully half of all newly arrived immigrants to Texas were illegally in America. While a case that these number are off can be made using Department of Homeland Security data showing that the number of illegal immigrants getting new jobs in Texas (60,000) was less than half that claimed in the CIS report (153,880), the more important issue is the flawed methodology that led to the report’s most widely reported claim.

It is true that Texas had a nation-leading net of 279,000 more jobs in the second quarter of 2011 than it did in the second quarter of 2007. But CIS’s claim that immigrants filled 225,000 of these jobs is wrong. There is no way to determine — statistically or otherwise — that this is the case. The numbers are simply not comparable. Looking at the total number of jobs created in our dynamic and complex economy shows the fault of this claim.