Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Reiterates Claim Immigrants Make America 'Poorer and Dirtier' Even as Advertisers Flee

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has not backed down this week from his claim that immigrants make the United States "poorer" and "dirtier," even as some advertisers have fled his program. In fact, he has reiterated that belief.

Carlson last week railed against the economics of immigration—bringing up the highly publicized migrant caravan—before slamming American leaders' immigration views.

"Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this," he said on his show. "We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement. Previous leaders of our country committed sins; we must pay for those sins by welcoming an endless chain of migrant caravans. That's the argument they make."

On Monday, Carlson started off a segment defending these comments by bringing up his interview Genaro Lopez, an official in Tijuana, Mexico who has railed against the migrant caravan members in his town, saying they've brought problems.

"Trashing the street, doing drugs in public, blocking traffic, breaking into homes—that's not at all what CNN promised us. Was Genaro Lopez one of those white nationalists The New York Times was always warning us about?" Carlson said on his show on Monday. "Did he make the whole thing up, pictures and all, for his own sick, bigoted reasons? Possibly. Or maybe—and this was our conclusion—there could be a lesson here for the United States."

After playing a clip of his original comments from last week, Carlson again railed against the economics of immigration before reiterating his belief that immigrants would make the U.S. dirtier and poorer.

He said:

"In a fast-evolving economy it could be preferable to import more engineers and fewer people with low skills, no matter how nice or well-meaning those people might be, and we always assume they are. That's what we said. That was our claim and it's hard to argue with that. In fact nobody on the left did argue with it, they ignored it. Instead, they zeroed in on the last line. The left says we have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor. Even if it makes our own country more like Tijuana is now, which is to say poorer and dirtier and more divided."

Amid Carlson's claims about the economics of immigration, an October report from the Hamilton Project at the centrist Brookings Institution found as immigration grows, so does economic output. Furthermore, the report concluded that immigrants contribute positively to government funding over time, and that immigrant impact on wages for low-skilled, native-born Americans was likely small.

Carlson's comments last week sparked anger online, which has begun to hit him where it hurts: advertisers. A number of sponsors have ditched his program, including Pacific Life, Nautilus Inc, Indeed.com and Smile Club Direct Club. Amid the advertiser exodus, Fox has stood by Carlson.

"It is a shame that left-wing advocacy groups, under the guise of being supposed 'media watchdogs' weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech," Fox News told Newsweek in a statement. "We continue to stand by and work with our advertisers through these unfortunate and unnecessary distractions."