More Misinformation from the Media:
President Trump is lying to you. We don’t have a problem with illegal immigration in this country. . . . President Trump speaks and tweets about Mexicans as if they are all criminals, boasting proudly over the weekend about his “crackdown.” But the real facts about violent crime in America gets [sic] lost in all his racist rhetoric. Fact one: violent crime is way down. According to the Department of Justice . . . the rate of “violent victimization” dropped from 79.8 to 20.1 per thousand between 1993 and 2014. Fact two: Other statistics report that the largest group of “bad hombres” in this country is white people, who committed 43.9 percent of America’s 6.5 million violent crimes in 2012-13. – Trump’s Policies Are the Real Immigration Problem in the U.S., Gersh Kuntzman, New York Daily News, 2/14/17.
Fact Check: Kuntzman should be careful when he accuses President Trump of lying when he so blatantly twists the truth himself. Did Trump ever state, or even suggest, that all Mexicans were criminals? The following is the quote that his critics commonly cite to make charges similar to Kuntzman’s.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. . . .” They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
This quote refers not to all Mexicans, but to those who illegally enter our country. As Trump states, they are not Mexico’s “best.” In other words there are plenty of Mexicans in Mexico who are good people, better than the ones who break our laws. He truthfully points out that some of these illegal aliens commit serious crimes such as drug trafficking and rape. But he also “assumes” that others don’t commit serious crimes, and he generously describes them as “good people.”
On another occasion he declared, “We’re going to secure the border, and once the border is secured at a later date, we’ll make a determination as to the rest. But we have some bad hombres here and we’re going to get them out.” Again, he makes a distinction between “bad hombres” and “the rest” who may not be so bad.
What exactly is “racist” about his comments about bad illegal aliens? After all, illegal isn’t a race. A genuine expression of racial animosity is Kuntzman’s statement that white Americans are “bad hombres” because they committed 43.9 percent of the country’s violent crimes. That sounds like a high crime rate, but not when compared with the white percentage of the total population, 63 percent. When that many people, by percentage, commit significantly less than 50 percent of violent crimes, they can hardly be characterized—in general—as “bad hombres.”
The general decline of “violent victimization” since the nineties does not prove that illegal immigration isn’t boosting crime. At only 3.5 percent of the population, they could be significantly contributing to serious crime even as the overall rate goes down. Illegal alien advocates disagree, and it is an article of faith among them that the crime rate of illegal aliens (not counting offenses related to immigration law) is less than the rate of native-born Americans.
But the truth of the matter is that no one can say for sure because the federal government and state governments don’t keep comprehensive data on illegal alien crime. Possibly they don’t want the truth known for political reasons. In any case, much existing data suggest the illegal alien crime rate is disproportionately high. Fox News did a study of federal and state statistics and found that “illegal immigrants are three times as likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5-percent of the U.S. population would suggest.” The Center for Immigration Studies also cites data indicating that illegal aliens commit more crimes than natives.
One point to keep in mind is that violating the law is something that all illegal aliens do. And this unchecked lawlessness probably encourages those who are violent to act on their inclination.