University of Maryland economist Peter Morici recently proclaimed in an opinion piece published in Oregon’s Statesman-Journal that the economy’s slow performance was due to the US’s loose immigration policies. In his piece, Morici numerous factors that contributed to the economy’s malaise including making this stunning claim.

“(They) have captured all of the nearly 9 million jobs created since 2000,” Morici wrote. “Illegal immigrants hold many of these positions, and now the president threatens to legalize their status by executive action if the Republican Congress won’t cave to his demands.”

Someone who read Morici’s piece asked if the economist was correct in his assertion that immigrants were getting all of the new jobs. Punditfact decided to look into the matter and (not surprisingly) his numbers didn’t add up. When questioned about where he got his data, Morici cited the Center for Immigration Studies a group started by retired ophthalmologist and environmentalist John Tanton from Detroit, Michigan and favors reduced immigration.

Punditfact discovered that there was more to the Center for Immigration Studies’ data than meets the eye.

[The study Morici used] focused on workers between 16 and 65 years old. In a footnote, the authors acknowledge that the results would look quite different if they had included older workers.

Using the study’s table, we did that and saw that while foreign-born workers did better than those born in the United States, they didn’t account for all of the gains. For workers 16 years old and up, the total change in employment was about 8.8 million. Of that, the number of foreign-born workers grew about 6.2 million and for native-born, the number was 2.6 million.

The center’s study also noted that the time period you pick will change what the data show. The report said, “Since the jobs recovery began in 2010, 43 percent of employment growth has gone to immigrants.” That, obviously, is much less than “all” of the new jobs.

It is worth noting that the study lumped legal and illegal immigrants together. Morici made a passing reference to illegal immigrants taking “many” of the new jobs. That claim is difficult to verify one way or the other because within the group of foreign-born workers, the ratio of American citizens to noncitizens has changed greatly in the past 15 years. In 2000, noncitizens outnumbered citizens by about 60 percent. In 2014, the difference was just 10 percent.

Furthermore, it would be a mistake to treat all of the noncitizen workers as illegal immigrants. All these data show is that they were not born in this country and have not become citizens. They could have proper work permits, so their legal status is unknown.

When Punditfact contacted Morici about their findings with CIS’s data he did not respond. As to the assertion of immigrants obtaining jobs at faster rates than Americans, a Federal Reserve Bank official Pia Orrenius told Punditfact that the demand for specific jobs has changed dramatically. Most likely, Orrenius says, due to new technologies and foreign-born workers face different than newcomers when seeking employment.

It is this kind of advocacy politics that environmentalists and other Left wing groups are notorious for pulling off. In the end, facts don’t matter since it is all about advancing a noble lie that fits their collective narrative.