Debunking the Myth that Illegal Immigrants Are More Criminal than U.S. Citizens
It's fine to deport dangerous criminals who are illegal immigrants, but it's wrong to stigmatize illegal immigrants in general as criminals; they're less criminal than U.S. citizens
In my earlier post, “Illegal* Immigration to the U.S.: Myth vs. Reality. \We need to get the facts straight in order to have a proper debate,” I have a section titled, “The Myth That Hispanic Immigrants Are [disproportionately] Criminals” that debunks that myth with actual data. I encourage you to read this section of that article. While you’re at it, read the entire article to see the persuasive evidence that the U.S. ruling class has for decades (using both major parties) been doing things south of the U.S. border deliberately to force poor people there to have to enter the United States illegally just in order to survive.
Here are scholarly articles that show that the rate of crime for illegal immigrants is actually lower, not higher, than for U.S. citizens.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) is a very prestigious journal. One of its articles is titled, “Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas” and it reports the following based on “uniquely comprehensive arrest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety”:
We find that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. In addition, the proportion of arrests involving undocumented immigrants in Texas was relatively stable or decreasing over this period. The differences between US-born citizens and undocumented immigrants are robust to using alternative estimates of the broader undocumented population, alternate classifications of those counted as “undocumented” at arrest and substituting misdemeanors or convictions as measures of crime.
Here are some graphics from the article:
Here is an article from the National Library of Medicine titled, “DOES UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRATION INCREASE VIOLENT CRIME?” that reports on data from all 50 states and Washington, DC as follows:
[W]e combine newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population with multiple data sources to capture the criminal, socioeconomic, and demographic context of all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 1990 to 2014 to provide the first longitudinal analysis of the macro-level relationship between undocumented immigration and violence. The results from fixed-effects regression models reveal that undocumented immigration does not increase violence. Rather, the relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime is generally negative, although not significant in all specifications. Using supplemental models of victimization data and instrumental variable methods, we find little evidence that these results are due to decreased reporting or selective migration to avoid crime.
The moral of the story told by these data
It is perfectly fine to deport dangerous criminals who entered the United States illegally. But it is WRONG to stigmatize illegal immigrants in general as being more criminal than U.S. citizens. The data show they are LESS criminal.
The Trump administration and its cheerleaders are working to deceitfully make Americans view illegal immigrants as a dangerous criminal element, as I discuss here.
The reason this is happening is to make deportations a hugely divisive issue for the purpose of turning us, the have-nots, against each other so that we will lack the solidarity we need to stop the ruling billionaire plutocracy from oppressing us with, for example, cuts to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and rising prices on consumer goods caused by the tariffs.
Yes. Your article demonstrates clearly the "illegals" have been made the "scapegoat". Scapegoating a minority population, in this case a "brown" minority who cannot protest (how ideal is that), is a tried and true political tactic. This is similar to what was done to the Jews in 1930s Germany. The propaganda campaign portraying our illegals has been vey effective as every time I post something in support of them, I am met with intense vitriol proving that racism is very much alive and well in America. My suspicion is they are using this as cover to build a massive police force capable of molesting all who are not "loyal" to the party line. I often write, "Remember, if they'll do it to "them", they'll do it to you."