Immigration 101: Are Illegal Immigrants (mostly) Criminals?

Note: This is the first in a series of posts focusing on the illegal immigrant situation in the US. While much of this is informed by my personal feelings and opinions, I do not claim to be unbiased, I have tried to share sources whenever possible. Please feel free to share with me your thoughts, but I ask that you would do so in love. Any comments given that are hurtful will be deleted, though they cannot be deleted from my mind, so consider our relationship when posting please. 


 I've heard from a lot of people that they believe illegal immigrants are mostly criminals, and not just for committing the crime of coming in illegally, I mean that is obvious. They are concerned about rape and murder, drugs and trafficking. "they're coming from prisons and jails, mental institutions, and insane asylums," Trump said at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia last year, "millions and millions of people that are coming from prisons." (1) People I know believed him outright, but I'd like to see the facts for myself.

 You know me, my first go to is to check the math. Trump says millions and millions of people are flooding into the United States from prisons. Well in that speech he was primarily talking about Venezuela and Mexico, so just how many people do they have in prison there if so many are escaping(?) and coming here. At last count, there were 27,022 people in prison in Venezuela (2) and 233,277 in Mexico (3). Together that adds up to 260,299. Hmmm. Well maybe they have so few because they sent them all here? According to the same website, in 2017 there were 54,315 prisoners in Venezuela and 201,903 in Mexico for a total of 256,218 so that's not it. I'm just not sure where these millions and millions of prisoners are coming from, but if you know, I'm open to finding out. As far as mental institutions go, they only have 31,378 in patients in Mexico (4) and in Venezuela (5) the numbers are a little trickier to ascertain, but by my math it's about 15,378, again for a total of 46,765. Again, a far cry from a million, let alone millions and millions.

 Ok, so let's say that's an exaggeration made for effect. But are the people coming in illegally violent criminals? We've been encouraged to believe that people emigrating illegally into America are dangerous, that only the bad guys would consider coming in any way but legally. The challenge to proving this absolutely is that we just don't keep statistics on whether people who commit crimes came into the country legally or not. The Justice Department keeps data on this for federal crimes, but those make up less than 10% of the crimes committed in our country (6). The only state that keeps data on the immigration status of people they detain is Texas. In analyzing this data, the Cato Institute found that, "For all criminal convictions in Texas in 2015, illegal immigrants had a criminal conviction rate 50 percent below that of native-born Americans." It lists out the specific rate less than native-born Americans illegal immigrants were convicted of homicide (16%), sex crimes (7.9%), and larceny (77%) as well. Now keep in mind these numbers are adjusted for population. It's not saying that illegal immigrants commit 16% fewer homicides. It's saying that statistically, by population, 16% fewer illegal immigrants committed homicide than native-born Americans did. And all this data is for Texas, right on the border of Mexico and one of the most likely places to find an illegal immigrant.

 So what does this look like in the rest of the country? According to other research put out by the Cato Institute, "Illegal immigrants are 47 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives." (7) They based this data on the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). According to this, "A comparison of census and FBI data shows the U.S. rate of violent crime was cut by nearly half from 1990 to 2013, while the number of undocumented immigrants in the country tripled." (8) This paper put out by the National Bureau for Economic Research states that, "relative to the US-born, immigrants’ incarceration rates have declined since 1960: immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated" (9). 

 So if this is what the data says, why do so many Americans believe otherwise? Media. Plain and simple. That and President Trump. He keeps insisting on misrepresenting the situation in public addresses which people, understandably, believe. He's our president, we should be able to trust him, right? In this article, National Public Radio shares a poll they did involving true/false questions. This infographic is rather telling. It shares the percentage of people who got the answers wrong and their self-reported primary news source (10):


Here's the Thing: We are affected by what we hear, see and read. It's easy to take things for granted, but I encourage you to follow up. Check their sources. Don't take things at face value. Even if it's the president.

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHGIsq2UVA&t=165s

(2) Venezuela: number of prisoners 2023 | Statista

(3) Mexico: prison population 2023 | Statista

(4) Country Profile Data and Template_FINAL_09.02.22_Mexico.xlsx

(5) Country Profile Data and Template_FINAL_09.02.22_Venezuela.xlsx

(6) This percentage was reported by Factcheck.org referencing an article previously found at https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus16.pdf, however when I attempted to visit this article I received the following notice: "The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance. During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." You can read Factcheck's article here: Is Illegal Immigration Linked to More or Less Crime? - FactCheck.org

(7) Incarcerated Immigrants in 2016: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin | Cato Institute

(8) Questions raised about study that links undocumented immigrants to higher crime - The Washington Post

(9) Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-born, 1870–2020 | NBER

(10) How Trump's crackdown plays into misperceptions about immigrants and crime

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

At least it's not bad news

Image
  Radical tumor removal is not always possible because of the critical brainstem or diencephalic locations of some tumors. Tumor progression and eventual death are likely in such patients. Stereotactic radiosurgery for pilocytic astrocytomas part 1: outcomes in adult patients Kano et. al.  So my posts are usually preceded by a scripture verse, often an encouraging one. Today I needed to give you an insight into what I've been experiencing. From the time I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, about a year and a half ago, I was reassured that it was a "WHO grade 1 benign" tumor. I, mistakenly, took this to mean that it wasn't a big deal. Even when I was told in June that it had grown "slightly," I thought that meant they'd zap it with radiation and that'd be the end of it. Guess what, I was wrong. When my June MRI revealed growth, I was referred to the Tumor Center for treatment. Fearing a long, drawn-out process, I was relieved when they scheduled all my...
Read more

The Next Crazy Thing

Image
Buckle in! This is a processing post so it is likely to be long and wordy and emotional and probably flawed in many ways. I thank you for your patience and anyone who makes it to the end gets bonus points in my book 😏.  Let's start with the info. I've been having progressively more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting migraines. Since my eye surgery in May, I've also been experiencing a great deal of nausea, almost daily. Sometimes meds help (with either), sometimes they don't. In addition, since the eye surgery, my double vision has intensified. My depth perception is shot, I'm regularly missing things I grab for, mistaking curbs for cracks in the sidewalk, bumping into walls or counters. Those are the three things that neurosurgery told us to watch for with regards to the shunt functioning properly: headaches, nausea, and vision changes. Now the vision changes were probably because of the surgery and the nausea was probably  because of the migraines, but th...
Read more

I Just Need a Little Help From My Friends...

Image
TLDR, just want to donate So this is a difficult post to write, probably even more difficult than figuring out how to tell people I had a brain tumor. I HATE asking people for money, for help, for most anything really - except prayer, I'm pretty good at asking for that! Here's the thing, I don't NEED money. I'm not looking for donations for a huge fundraiser like the 3-Day (did that a long time ago). I'm not going on a mission trip. But I am doing something new, something I can't do without help. In this eye of the storm season I'm in, I've become positively obsessed with travel. The thing is, travel is expensive and while I could just spend our savings to do what I want, that wouldn't be great stewardship of our future and hopeful retirement. So I've been learning about points and miles and the best way to get return towards travel with the spending we're doing anyways (like paying bills and buying groceries). The thing is, to really make th...
Read more