500 Words on Immigration and Crime
One of the great myths of our time is that immigrants, especially illegal/undocumented immigrants, commit a lot of crime.
This is false. The crime rate among illegal/undocumented immigrants is actually lower than that among citizens.
If you watch Fox News, though, this may sound insane. For years, Fox and other conservative outlets have massively over-reported crime committed by immigrants, making it seem like it happens all the time. They’ve used inflammatory language, referring to immigration as an “invasion” of our country. They’ve exaggerated the size of gangs like MS-13 (which actually started in California, by the way, and which is certainly bad, but not nearly as large as this coverage suggests). They’ve made it seem like we’re under attack.
Why? That’s the question you have to ask yourself. Why are Trump, Fox, and others lying to you?
The studies are clear. In Texas, the crime rate was 40% lower among illegal/undocumented immigrants than among citizens. Nationally, a study by the libertarian Cato institute found that illegal immigrants are 47% less likely to be incarcerated than citizens are. Between 1990 and 2013, while the number of undocumented immigrants in the country tripled, the U.S. rate of violent crime was cut in half.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
One thing Trump and Fox do is use raw numbers instead of percentages. Trump once mentioned that Texas arrested 200,000 “criminal aliens” between 2011–2016, for example. But Trump didn’t say how many citizens were arrested during the same period! (Answer: many more.) That’s like saying “today is raining, therefore it’s always raining” without looking at the weather for the week, the month, or the year.
Oh, and get this — that one statistic wasn’t even right. “Criminal aliens” includes every non-citizen, most of whom are “legal aliens” here on work or tourist visas. (That was also true in another study, from Arizona, which likewise jumped legal and illegal immigrants together, but which has been repeated over and over again by the Trump administration and Fox News.)
Another time, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson exclaimed that 44% of all federal inmates are non-citizens. Except, two-thirds of them were in prison for immigration offenses, not other crimes. Actually only 15% of total federal inmates were non-citizens — and again, an unknown chunk of them were people here legally with visas.
These twists and lies just go on, and on, and on.
So again: why?
The vast majority of immigrants, legal and otherwise, come here to make better lives for themselves and their families, just like my grandparents did in the 1920s, before today’s harsh and broken immigration laws were passed.
They don’t sneak across the border — in fact, most illegal/undocumented immigrants come legally and then overstay their visas. They aren’t in gangs. They aren’t murderers or rapists, like Trump said in 2016. They’re moms and dads.
It’s fine that Americans disagree about immigration policy. But why is one side constantly lying about it?
