1. “Immigrants will take our jobs and lower our wages, especially hurting the poor.”

The smallest estimates immigration surplus, as it is called, is equal to about 0.24 percent of GDP – which excludes the gains to immigrants and just focuses on those of native-born Americans.

2. “Immigrants abuse the welfare state.”

Immigrants are less likely to use means-tested welfare benefits that similar native-born Americans.... it is far easier and cheaper to build a higher wall around the welfare state, instead of around the country.

3. “Immigrants are a net fiscal cost.”

The empirics on this are fairly consistent – immigrants in the United States have a net-zero impact on government budgets

4. “Immigrants increase economic inequality.”

I don’t see the problem if an immigrant quadruples his income by coming to the United States, barely affects the wages of native-born Americans here, and increases economic inequality as a result.

5. “Today’s immigrants don’t assimilate like previous immigrant groups did.”

There is a large amount of research that indicates immigrants are assimilating as well as or better than previous immigrant groups – even Mexicans.

6. “Immigrants are especially crime prone.”

Immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated for violent and property crimes and cities with more immigrants and their descendants are more peaceful.

7. “Immigrants pose a unique risk today because of terrorism.”

For all foreign-born terrorists on U.S. soil, the chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack is one in 3.6 million during the same period of time [from 1975 to 2015]. Almost 99 percent of those murders occurred on 9/11 and were committed by foreigners on tourist visas and one student visa, not immigrants.

8. “It’s easy to immigrate to America and we’re the most open country in the world.”

The percentage of our population that is foreign-born is about 13 percent – below historical highs in the United States and less than half of what it is in modern New Zealand and Australia.

9. “Amnesty or failure to enforce our immigration laws will destroy the Rule of Law in the United States.”

Enforcing laws that are inherently capricious and that are contrary to our traditions is inconsistent with a stable Rule of Law

10. “National sovereignty.”

U.S. immigration laws are not primarily designed or intended to keep out foreign armies, spies, or insurgents. The main effect of our immigration laws is to keep out willing foreign workers from selling their labor to voluntary American purchasers.

11. “Immigrants won’t vote for the Republican Party – look at what happened to California.”

Those who claim that changing demographics due to immigration is solely responsible for the shift in California’s politics have to explain the severe drop-off in support for the GOP at exactly the same time that the party was using anti-immigration propositions and arguments to win the 1994 election.

12. “Immigrants bring with them their bad cultures, ideas, or other factors that will undermine and destroy our economic and political institutions. The resultant weakening in economic growth means that immigrants will destroy more wealth than they will create.”

This is the most intelligent anti-immigration argument and the one most likely to be correct, although the evidence currently doesn’t support it being true.

13. “The brain drain of smart immigrants to the United State impoverished other countries.”

The flow of skilled workers from low-productivity countries to high-productivity nations increases the incomes of people in the destination country, enriches the immigrant, and helps (or at least doesn’t hurt) those left behind. Furthermore, remittances that immigrants send home are often large enough to offset any loss in home country productivity by emigration.... Economic development should be about increasing the incomes of people not the amount of economic activity in specific geographical regions.

14. “Immigrants will increase crowding, harm the environment, and [insert misanthropic statement here].”

The late economist Julian Simon spent much of his career showing that people are an economic and environmental blessing, not a curse.

15. “Some races and ethnic groups are genetically inferior. They need to be prevented from coming here, breeding, and decreasing America’s good ethnic stock.”

That's not a nice thing to say.