Illegal Aliens Commit More Crimes

The Quote Below – More Misinformation from the Media

“President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, lashed out at the U.S. leader’s Democratic 2020 rivals on Tuesday, accusing Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren of wanting to allow illegals to come across the border and kill Americans. . . .

“Despite Lewandowski’s claims, research has time and time again suggested that immigrants in the U.S. are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans. . . .

“In one such study, published by the libertarian Cato Institute in February, researchers analyzed criminal conviction data for 2015 provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety, finding that native-born residents were significantly more likely to be convicted of a crime than immigrants who were either in the country legally or illegally.” – Former Trump Campaign Manager Says Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ‘Want to Have Illegal Aliens Come Across This Border and Kill Americans, Chantal Da Silva, Newsweek, 10/2/19 [Link]

Fact Check on Quote Above: The “mainstream” media endlessly repeat that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans as if that were some kind of divine revelation. The truth of the matter is that they have no basis for their utter certainly. The reason is that there are no comprehensive and fully reliable statistics on immigrants’ crime.

Columnist Ann Coulter did extensive research on this issue and found that “[T]he government issues a series of comical reports claiming to tally immigrant crime. The Department of Justice relies on immigrants’ self-reports of their citizenship. The U.S. Census simply guesses the immigration status of inmates. The Government Accounting Office conducts its own analysis of Bureau of Prisons data. In other words, the government hasn’t the first idea of how many prisoners are legal immigrants, illegal immigrants or anchor babies.”

Nevertheless, some limited data from government sources give clues as to what the overall picture is. The article above cites a study by the Cato Institute based on statistics from Texas. Other statistics, however, reveal a higher crime rate by illegal immigrants. A study by the Crime Prevention Research Center based on data from Arizona found that illegal aliens between 15 and 35, three percent of the state’s population, comprise eight percent of Arizona’s prison population.

Another study shedding some light on this issue, published by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), cited federal statistics revealing that noncitizens are convicted of 21 percent of federal crimes—2.5 times their share of the population. The federal data do not break down the percentages of noncitizens who are legal and illegal immigrants.

A spokesman for CIS notes that this percentage does not necessarily apply to the whole country because most law enforcement takes place at the state and local level. Nevertheless, federal law enforcement is not insignificant.

Claims that illegal aliens commit fewer crimes based on some statistics about conviction rates ignore the numerous crimes they commit which seldom result in arrest or conviction. Document fraud, practiced by nearly all illegal aliens, is one example. In numerous cases they steal IDs from Americans, which can cause significant problems for those citizens. Illegal aliens steal jobs and public benefits which properly belong to Americans. The illegal aliens who receive wages without filing federal tax forms—about half of them in the workforce—are guilty of tax evasion. And many who do file returns receive cash benefits by fraudulently claiming child tax credits.

One purpose of immigration laws is to screen out people with criminal backgrounds. For this reason it may well be that legal immigrants have a lower crime rate than natives. Illegal immigrants are another matter. The burden of proof is on those who claim that people who habitually break our laws are somehow more law-abiding than the rest of us.

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