Alright, America. Let’s talk about something that makes us sweat more than a politician with a burner phone—immigration. Specifically, this mind-boggling idea that a few bad apples mean we should stop letting people into the country altogether.
Now, hang on, because I’m about to drop some apple science on you. Did you know that a single truckload of apples has about 100,000 apples in it? That’s right, 100,000 little, delicious nuggets of fruit joy all bouncing around together. But—uh-oh—about 1% of those apples are gonna be bad. So, in every shipment of 100,000 apples, that’s around 1,000 apples that show up bruised, rotten, or, as I like to call them, “nature’s pre-wine.”
Now let’s do some math—stay with me, I promise no pop quiz at the end. The U.S. ships 250,000 truckloads of apples a year. That means 250 million bad apples are arriving in stores. But you don’t see anyone running around screaming, “My God! The apples are coming! They’re gonna get us all!” No one’s freaking out at Trader Joe’s, demanding apple deportation policies. You just grab the bad one, toss it in the garbage, and eat the good apples, because that’s how fruit works.
And yet, for some reason, when it comes to immigration, we completely lose our minds. We act like every single immigrant is that one rotten apple, when in reality—brace yourself for a plot twist—most immigrants are perfectly good apples! Crazy, right? But no, instead of focusing on the 99,000 apples that are fresh, juicy, and here to contribute to society, we’re over here losing sleep over the small percentage that are bruised.
Now, listen, I’m not saying the criminal element in immigration isn’t a problem. Some immigrants commit crimes. Some apples are bad. These things happen. But the way we’re handling this is like banning all apples from grocery stores because a few might be spoiled. It’s like throwing the entire barrel off a cliff because one Granny Smith has a bruise.
Let me lay it out for you with actual numbers—because we love numbers, don’t we? They make us feel smart. In the U.S., we have about 44 million immigrants. And you know what? Most of them are doing what the rest of us are doing: working, raising families, binge-watching Netflix, and trying not to eat the entire sleeve of Oreos in one sitting. And here’s the kicker: immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. Yeah, you heard me. You’re more likely to be robbed by that dude from high school who peaked at 17 than by someone who just moved here.
A study by the Cato Institute (and these are people who wear suits and talk in serious voices, so you know they’re legit) found that undocumented immigrants are 44% less likely to be incarcerated than people born here. And legal immigrants? Even lower rates. So where’s the logic? Why are we out here building walls and rounding people up like we’re starring in some dystopian reboot of Home Alone?
It’s because we’re obsessed with the bad apples. We’re so fixated on the 1% that we can’t see the other 99%. That’s why immigration has become this political football, kicked around by people more interested in scoring points than in actually solving anything. The minute we start talking about real solutions—like, I don’t know, comprehensive immigration reform—everyone freaks out like we just suggested renaming football to “soccer.”
Imagine if we applied this “bad apples” logic to the rest of life. We’d never go to a restaurant again because, hey, one time you had bad sushi. We’d never drive cars because some drivers are maniacs. And don’t even get me started on online dating—if we judged all people by their worst Tinder matches, the human race would have gone extinct in 2013.
But back to the apples! Let’s say you’re at the grocery store. You’re picking out apples. You find a bruised one. What do you do? You toss it out and move on with your life. You don’t set the store on fire and start screaming about a “rotten apple invasion.” No, you just handle it, because that’s what normal people do when faced with a minor problem.
So why can’t we do the same with immigration? Why can’t we sort through the system, deal with the criminal element, and leave the rest alone? We could have comprehensive immigration reform that actually makes sense. We could have a path to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants who are already here, contributing, paying taxes, and not getting arrested. We could reform our immigration courts so that people aren’t stuck in limbo for years. But that would be sensible, and God forbid we do something sensible when we could just keep screaming about the bad apples.
And here’s the thing: bad apples don’t inherently spoil the whole bunch. They only do that if you let them sit there, festering long enough, ignored, and unattended. So maybe, just maybe, instead of letting fear drive our immigration policies, we could, I don’t know, do something about it. We could invest in humane border security. We could support immigrants already living here instead of treating them like some sort of existential threat to America’s apple supply.
But no. Instead, we’re letting a few bad apples turn us into a nation of people terrified of orchards. We’re throwing out the good apples and pretending it’s “tough on crime.” But let’s be real: focusing only on the bad isn’t going to fix anything. It’s like staring at a bruise on one apple and deciding that apples are over. You’re done with them. Apple pie? Nope. Apple juice? Forget it. We’re just giving up on apples entirely because one was bad.
So here’s the bottom line: we need to stop letting the bad apples dominate the conversation. When we focus on the bad, we lose sight of the good, and that’s when we make terrible decisions. But if we can shift our focus—if we can see the whole picture—then maybe we can actually start fixing things. Maybe we can handle the real problems without blowing up the entire system in the process.
Because, at the end of the day, we all love apples. And guess what? We love immigrants, too. It turns out when you change your focus, you change your mind. Who knew?
