Do Immigrants Commit more Crimes than Native Born Citizens?
I am stealing a Facebook comment by my fellow writer Angry Bear Joel. Do illegal and legal immigrants commit crimes? Well yes, they do. It is not as serious as what US citizens do. I am quoting from Cato, which would be on the other side of the spectrum from a more liberal viewpoint.
“The results are similar to our other work on illegal immigration and crime in Texas. In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants, 535 per 100,000 legal immigrants, and 1,422 per 100,000 native-born Americans. The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45 percent below that of native-born Americans in Texas. The general pattern of native-born Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowest holds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes.“
Mind you, this is Texas now. Hmmmm, then what is the beef then? Kind of hard to throw them out of the US if you can not find them committing “serious crimes” crimes. Maybe it is because our president does not like immigrants? Joel has a good reason as to why we should have immigrants.
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Joel: “Immigration R Us”
While Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem and Stephen “PeeWee German” Miller continue to equate all immigrants with crime, it’s important to recall that immigration has always been a strength for America. For my Manhattan Project peeps, think of Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, George Kistiakowsky and Isidor Rabi.
Do immigrants commit crimes? Sure. But a lower rates than native-born Americans.
Trump, Noem and Miller are destroying a key strength of America. We are weaker by every measure because of their racist and nativist activity. Real American patriots oppose their xenophobia.
The atmosphere, that thin layer of no longer potentially toxic gasses we live in enveloping the only ball of rock we know of we can live on no more recognizes the boundaries of “nation/states” than do those fleeing habitats no longer habitable. Convenient scapegoats are going to do what they need to do wherever they come from, or wherever they go
I’m fully on-board with the Walking Drum: we’ve been pushing each other around since Australopithecus. Let’s not lose sight of that. I don’t see any evidence later immigrants are any more criminal than the descendants of earlier
No “immigrant,” legal or otherwise, has done me harm. Whities, on the other hand …
Conviction rates being what they are make a poor metric for criminal activity. However, all the more so for crimes committed where the majority of witnesses are afraid to come forwards because they fear deportation. Rational immigration reform will both raise wages and reduce crime.
@RC,
Of course, fewer immigrants can afford the kinds of lawyers that will prevent conviction. Ultimately, it’s probably better than arrests as an estimate for criminal activity.
I’m no expert but I thought that immigration law was not specifically tied to other criminal behavior. Looking for dangerous people who have committed other serious offenses I thought of as a resource prioritization, not a legal requirement. While I support focusing on people who have demonstrated other criminal behavior, I don’t see why folks who have only broken US immigration law should not be held accountable for that. For all the hoopla, the sanctions imposed for immigration violations are not really that much in most cases. As an example, returning a Peruvian to Peru is not exactly incarcerating him for 7 years or sending him to the chopping block. From a personal perspective I think my family would be better off if my wife and I owed no federal tax, but I don’t expect the IRS or tax courts would care that neither of us have criminal records.
@Eric,
“I think my family would be better off if my wife and I owed no federal tax, but I don’t expect the IRS or tax courts would care that neither of us have criminal records.”
Wait. The IRS has thousands of masked thugs in camo and carrying automatic weapons yanking people off the street and holding them in concentration camps without charges? Who knew?
As for Peruvians sent to Peru, what about the deportation of hundreds of *Venezuelans* to *El Salvador*, where they are imprisoned indefinitely without trial in the notorious CECOT prison, reportedly under an agreement for financial exchange? Most had no criminal record.
You don’t have to be an expert to avoid making false analogies.
The Trump administration doesn’t care about undocumented immigration. This is about setting up a police state in America.