The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“From Donald Trump’s vitriolic description of Mexican immigrants during his 2015 presidential campaign announcement (“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”) to Alabama Sen. Katie Britt’s speech last month using a young woman’s tragic murder to excoriate the Biden administration’s border policies (“That could’ve been my daughter. It could’ve been yours.”), Republicans today have weaponized a toxic trope with disturbing precedents in America.
“Fact: Immigrants to the U.S. — including illegal immigrants — commit violent crime here at significantly lower (not higher) rates than native-born Americans.
That’s not a justification for illegal immigration. But it should stand as an indictment of the truly ugly lie that Trump and his party are peddling right now in an effort to ride racial fear and xenophobia back into the White House. . . .
“But Britt’s technically factual account of the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia in February was also misleading, in a more subtle and dangerous way.
“The murder, allegedly by an undocumented Venezuelan migrant, was as tragic as any other.
“But Britt’s focus on the suspect as “one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland” treats the incidental factor of his migrant status as if it’s the whole point. And her seething exhortation that “innocent Americans are dying” was clearly meant to foster the impression there is an epidemic of violent migrant crime afoot.
“That’s the opposite of true. The fact that migrants who are in the U.S. illegally have lower violent-crime rates than those born here is neither seriously disputed nor particularly surprising.
It’s not surprising because, by definition, foreign nationals living in America without legal immigrant status have every incentive to stay out of trouble and avoid attracting the attention of authorities.
“Among the many academic studies that have confirmed this phenomenon, one of the strongest was conducted by the libertarian Cato Institute in 2019 and focused on Texas, which has among the highest populations of both documented and undocumented immigrants. . . .”— and House Republicans killed it at Trump’s command because he knows the border crisis is more useful to him politically than a solution. . . . – No, Undocumented Immigrants are not more Crime-Prone. They Are Less so. Daily Camera, Views from the Nation’s Press, 4/22/24 [Link]
Fact Check: Along with its tiresome Trump bashing, this article doubles down on one of the dogmas of immigration advocates, namely that illegal aliens commit fewer violent crimes than native-born Americans. The truth, however, is that no one really knows exactly what their crime rates are because few American jurisdictions keep track of them.
One exception is the Texas Department of Public Safety DPS). According to the Cato Institute, the figures from that state show a lower level of violence by illegal aliens. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) takes issue with this claim by noting that the DPS takes time to identify arrested suspects as illegal aliens. For this and other reasons, its initial figures tend to undercount illegal alien crimes. CIS maintains that with proper interpretation, the DPS statistics show that illegals, on average, commit more homicides and sexual assaults.
In any case, the statistics from Texas don’t necessarily provide an accurate picture of alien crime nationwide. Various other data may provide indications, but once again there is no firm statistical basis of the dogma that illegal aliens are less prone to violence than natives. This claim, however, serves to deflect attention from the fact that all illegal aliens commit nonviolent crimes simply by being here. Along with illegal entry they commonly commit document fraud, tax fraud, and other lawbreaking. These are not victimless crimes, They impose real costs on American citizens.
One matter to consider is that our wide-open border and other alien-friendly policies are inviting violent criminals to move here, one example being the accused killer of Laken Riley. Something else that may invite them is the lax on crime attitude in some of our big cities. Promoting this is the election of “rogue prosecutors” supported and financed by billionaire open-border activist George Soros.
Until recently, one of the most crime-prone countries in the Western Hemisphere was El Salvador, home of the infamous MS-13 gang. But crime has sharply declined there, thanks to a harsh crackdown by the government. That being the case, violent Salvadoran criminals may be headed our way in search of a better life—of crime.