Everything you know about illegal immigration is wrong.

• We are not being flooded with illegal Mexican migrants. The total number of migrants from Mexico has varied very little since the 1950s. The massive influx many have written about never happened.
• Net illegal migration has stopped almost ­completely.
• Illegal migration has not stopped because of stricter border enforcement, which Massey characterizes as a waste of money at best and counterproductive at worst.
• There are indeed more undocumented Mexicans living in the United States than there were 20 years ago, but that is because fewer migrants are returning home — not because more are sneaking into the country.
• And the reason that fewer Mexican citizens are returning home is because we have stepped up border enforcement so dramatically.

[via Princeton Alumni Weekly: Crisis Contrived.]