Opinion | Take the quiz on U,S, immigration

With former president Donald Trump describing an immigrant invasion — and even Democrats acknowledging that the U.S. border is insecure — it is easy to worry about the large number of immigrants arriving in the United States. Will they bring crime? Mooch off your taxes? Change American culture? Taking this quiz might help you calibrate just how worried you should be.

That proportion is less than many might imagine, particularly given claims that the United States has already taken in too many foreigners. The United States chooses to admit some of these immigrants on work, family or other visas. But what about immigrants who arrive illegally?

Still, arriving illegally or not, immigrants from developing nations might need help once they get here. It’s natural to wonder if they will expand poverty in the United States.

A related worry is that immigrants will not be able to sustain themselves and their families and will end up relying on welfare to survive.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has argued that immigrants are predominantly criminals, contributing to rising crime in the United States. What about that concern?

For sure, many Americans welcome immigrants as critical additions to the labor force who have helped boost economic growth and contain inflation, and as contributors to the nation’s rich cultural diversity. But many accept Mr. Trump’s tale of hordes of immigrants “destroying the blood of our country,” bringing only poverty and crime. Even those who do not subscribe to all of Mr. Trump’s blood-and-soil nationalism still hear reports of unprecedented numbers of migrants seeking asylum and worry about disorder.

The result is a debate that calls to mind a darker moment a century ago, when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924 that barred people from Asia — viewed as particularly undesirable at the time — and set migration quotas equal to 2 percent of foreign born people by nationality according to the 1890 census, limiting migration mostly to people from countries such as Germany and Canada, which were considered less “socially inadequate” than people from Russia or Poland.

The notion that today’s migrants are a burden is as misguided as it was back then. The perception of immigrants as poor criminals dependent on welfare is wrong and repeated studies have found migrants are a critical pillar of the economy. Immigration has, in fact, become the nation’s major source of new workers.

This is not to say that securing the U.S.-Mexico border is unnecessary; the United States should vet those it admits. The U.S. system of asylum is clearly not equipped to deal with millions of migrants who arrive at the border every year and are released into the country to wait for months, or even years, for a hearing before an immigration court. Still, immigration should not be the toxic issue it has become, and immigrants should not be feared any more than — or even as much as — the average American. The country needs infusions of new people to ensure its future.