Just hours after an impromptu meeting with Mexico’s President Nieto, Donald Trump flew into Phoenix to give an anticipated speech attempting to clarify his position on illegal immigration.  Trump repeated many lies, but trotted out some new ones to try out on the American people as well. We’ll start near the beginning with an a lie that is central to Trump’s immigration platform: illegal immigration is high and getting worse.

“But if we’re going to make our immigration system work, then we have to be prepared to talk honestly and without fear about these important and very sensitive issues,” Trump told the crowd. “For instance, we have to listen to the concerns that working people, our forgotten working people, have over the record pace of immigration and its impact on their jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills and general living conditions.”

As Trump rues the pitiable state of America in so many ways, it again turns out that the numbers do not bear out his dismal view of the US. Far from a “record pace of immigration,” there are actually fewer Mexican immigrants in the US now than in 2009.

From 2009 to 2014 more Mexican immigrants returned to their home country than came to the US. According to the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics study, approximately 1 million Mexicans went back to Mexico, largely to reunite with their families. According to the US Census, approximately 870,000 Mexicans entered the US.

That is a net loss of 130,000 individuals, hardly a “record pace of immigration.”

Sources:
http://www.npr.org/2016/08/31/492096565/fact-check-donald-trumps-speech-on-immigration