Entrepreneur and businessman Andrew Yang falsely suggested during the third 2020 Democrat presidential primary debate that legal immigration levels into the United States have dropped in recent years.
Anchor Jorge Ramos asked Yang if he would increase current legal immigration levels from the current rate of about 1.2 million a year to at least 2 million legal immigrants a year gaining entry into the United States.
In response, Yang suggested he would “return” legal immigration levels to what existed under former President Barack Obama, despite legal immigration levels remaining the same since the late 1990s.
“My father grew up on a peanut farm in Asia with no floor, and now, his son is running for president,” Yang said. “That is the immigration that we have to be able to share with the American people. … I would return the level of legal immigration to the point it was under the Obama-Biden administration.”
Legal immigration levels, though, have continued at an average of about 1.2 million legal immigrants being admitted to the country every year for two decades.
No change in legal immigration levels have occurred since the Obama administration, though President Trump has sought both to decrease legal immigration to cut the foreign competition that America’s working and middle class are subject to every year and to raise American workers’ wages.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.