Deal with it, Democrats: illegal immigrants commit crime far more often than legal immigrants.
Six days after President Trump was inaugurated as our 45th President, the typing wizards at the New York Times got a little desperate. We’re talking nail biting; chain-smoking; shot-pounding nervous.
So they made a story. Days before President Trump’s first address to Congress—CNN and Vox copied the New York Times’ yellow journalism. Their big story: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE HARDWORKING TAXPAYERS WHO RARELY COMMIT CRIMES. (Too bad it was also a big lie.)
Contradictions and fallacies immediately jump out at you. For example, from the New York Times:
“A central point of an executive order President Trump signed on Wednesday — and a mainstay of his campaign speeches — is the view that undocumented immigrants pose a threat to public safety. But several studies, over many years, have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. And experts say the available evidence does not support the idea that undocumented immigrants commit a disproportionate share of crime [emphasis added].”
Besides conflating legal immigration with illegal immigration, the Times cites “several studies” making the same conflation. Most notably, a 2007 Rutgers University paper that analyzes crime rates of legal immigrants. So besides being out-of-date, the paper does not offer us any research on illegal immigrant crime rates.
Similar to the New York Times, CNN cited a study from over 20 years ago citing data from 1997 and earlier. Vox cited a study that focuses solely on legal immigrants and crime. Both articles were attacking Trump’s policies targeting illegal immigrant crime.
Hot Off the Press: False Equivalency
Why is the media fabricating a false narrative that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than American citizens? Here’s why: To attack President Trump’s immigration policies, most notably his travel ban.
How moronic do the journalists at CNN; the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media think we are? And why is no one exposing this huge scandal?
First off, any data on crimes committed by illegal immigrants is scarce at best. So, because the data doesn’t exist the media is citing studies relying on data from 1980-to-1997, and published up to 20 years ago to prove a false narrative.
While dated, these studies do show that legal immigrants, when compared to American citizens, sometimes—in pointed instances—have lower crimes rates. These studies do not tell us anything about the relationship between illegal immigration and crime.
However, we do have some data. The Texas Department of Public Safety publishes annual crime statistics, and also released illegal immigrant crime statistics from June 1, 2011 through February 28, 2017. During this period, Texas law enforcement booked 1,162 homicides by illegal immigrants, compared to 4,065 total homicides for the state of Texas between 2011 and 2015. Comparing the number of arrests made of illegal immigrants to total number of arrests, illegal immigrants represent 3.5% of all arrests.
Mexico: Democrats’ #1 Straw Man
Trump’s new travel ban specifically and exclusively places travel restrictions on citizens from six countries: Libya, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Syria for a blip in time (90 days). Probably the most underreported story in America today is country that happens to be missing from this list: Mexico.
Besides being antiquated and dealing with legal rather than illegal immigrants, the studies the mainstream media is referencing all happen to be emphasizing data based on immigrants who are of Hispanic descent. In other words, the media is using data that shows legal Latino immigrants are not wanton criminals in comparison to natural-born American citizens to claim that we should blindly welcome illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds like Syria and Libya.
There’s no using denying reality: we simply do not have enough data on illegal immigrants from the countries impacted by President Trump’s proposed travel ban. The media is making assumptions based on non-correlating data.
Let’s get this information in the public arena so that—for the first time—we can have an honest discussion on immigration reform in America.