Immigrants, including ILLEGAL, far less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans

[Mr. Ukucasha]

The modern U.S. conservative movement can be summarized by one slogan: "feelings over facts."

While US liberals use facts and logic to guide their decision making, conservatives rely on fear-mongering and appeals to emotion. Nowhere is this better scene that GOP response to the SOTU. Don't get me wrong, Laken Riley's death is a tragedy. Even one death is one death too many. But conservatives appeal to emotions and feelings by exploiting the death of ONE person by an undocumented immigrant and using that as a justification for the deportation of millions of people. It's like using Sandy Hook to associate all white men with crime and violence.

Perhaps their fears would be justified if illegal immigrants were more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, but the exact opposite is true.

Some of the most extensive research comes from Stanford University. Economist Ran Abramitzky found that since the 1960s, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born people.

There is also state level research, that shows similar results: researchers at the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, looked into Texas in 2019. They found that undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime.

Beyond incarceration rates, research also shows that there is no correlation between undocumented people and a rise in crime. Recent investigations by The New York Times and The Marshall Project found that between 2007 and 2016, there was no link between undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crime in those communities.

The reason for this gap in criminal behavior might have to do with stability and achievement. The Stanford study concludes that first-generation male immigrants traditionally do better than U.S-.born men who didn't finish high school, which is the group most likely to be incarcerated in the U.S.

The study also suggests that there's a real fear of getting in trouble and being deported within immigrant communities. Far from engaging in criminal activities, immigrants mostly don't want to rock the boat.

Also: https://news.wisc.edu/undocumented-immigrants-far-less-likely-to-commit-crimes-in-u-s-than-citizens/]Undocumented immigrants far less likely to commit crimes in U.S. than citizens


Sorry conservatives, but facts don't care about your feelings.

[jojoju1998]

Immigrants are also more liekly to start a small business. https://news.mit.edu/2022/study-immigrants-more-likely-start-firms-create-jobs-0509

And they're more religious. More focused on the traditional family. https://ifstudies.org/blog/most-immigrant-families-are-traditional-families


Indeed, if it wasn't for the Republican Party's racialist rhetoric,

Immigrants would be a number 1 republican party consituency.

[Ferguson97]

Republicans do not care about Laken Riley or her family. People are murdered every day. The only reason that they are exploiting this family's grief is because they don't like the skin color of the person who murdered her.

[T'Chenka]

The facts and data about this have been known for years. Republicans just ignore it or baselessly accuse the data of being wrong.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Illegals shouldn't even be here though so any crime committed is one too many.

[Goldwater]

Nobody cares about statistics, politics is all about vibes.

[TML]

The real reason for Republicans/right-wingers anti-immigration position nowadays has to do with the fact that most modern immigrants are people of color (and there's a reason why this is the case - neoliberal policies pursued by the US and other western powerhouse countries have disproportionately affected places where most local people are nonwhite, thereby forcing them to flee their homelands), which runs contrary to their goal of white supremacy. In fact, when the term "open borders" is used in right-wing circles nowadays, very often it is code word for "more immigrants of color."

[MasterJedi]

While it’s absolutely horrible what happened to Laken Riley, it’s even worse what Republicans are trying to exploit from her murder.

Separately, they’ll use a young white woman to do it. Out west and in Alaska they’re completely ignoring the systemic abduction, rape, murder and trafficking of native women. They’re even actively trying to obfuscate the issue and make sure nothing is done because it’s home grown good ole boys engaged in it too.

[dead0man]

CCW permit holders have an even lower crime rate, but most you still want to take their rights away.

[LBJer]

You can use the same tactic the Republicans use against illegal immigrants--looking at the actions of a few particular individuals to condemn an entire group--against any group of people.  

For example, it's not as if all Jews have been saints over the millenia.  Someone could say: "Look what we have here.  Jordan Belfort.  Bernie Madoff.  Ivan Boesky.  What more do you need to know? Jews are a scourge on the U.S. and the world."  The logic is very unfair--the three people I mentioned were and are hardly representative of Jews as a whole--but it's the same trick Republican play with isolated horror stories about illegal immigrants.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Very true, but they are brown and therefore scary/different and therefore apparently predisposed to be criminals. So that's what Republicans are focusing on to scare easily led simpletons.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

While it’s absolutely horrible what happened to Laken Riley, it’s even worse what Republicans are trying to exploit from her murder.

[GP270watch]

 I predicted in one of the previous threads that we'll see a historic drop in crime in the next few years wherever the migrants were concentrated, and an economic boom too. You can set your watch to it.

[HisGrace]

Full disclosure, I am pro immigration, against a border wall, think we should have a large scale amnesty for illegals, exc. That said, the reason for this statistic is very obvious, and most of you can probably guess what it is but won't say it out loud.

[Bismarck]

The crime rate for illegal immigrants is 100% unless they came as children. I don’t believe in demonizing them though.

[Fuzzy Bear]

The crime rate for illegal immigrants is 100% unless they came as children. I don’t believe in demonizing them though.

Not quite true.  But the rate of illegal immigrants that commit crimes is 100% for those who re-enter the United States after having previously been deported.

The study in question talks about "immigrants".  What percentage of Illegal Immigrants commit crimes?  There's a world of difference between Legal Immigrants and Illegal Immigrants in terms of behavior over time.

Illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes against other illegal immigrants than against American citizens.  Illegal immigrant victims are less likely to report being victimized to authorities for fear of being deported.  Illegal immigrants committing crimes are certainly less likely to be reported to authorities if people know that they are members of Transnational Gangs.

Were the Mariel Boatlift aliens more or less law abiding?  They were less law abiding, and no one disputes this.  The present state of our border has caused Venezuela to release prisoners and send them off on the road to the Rio Grande into America.  It cuts their budgets.  There is a cooperative effort from pols to gaslight the rest of us for refusing to back down from the position that allowing people to freely enter America unvetted (which we're pretty close to) is simply intolerable and wrong. 

[GP270watch]

The crime rate for illegal immigrants is 100% unless they came as children. I don’t believe in demonizing them though.

Not quite true.  But the rate of illegal immigrants that commit crimes is 100% for those who re-enter the United States after having previously been deported.

The study in question talks about "immigrants".  What percentage of Illegal Immigrants commit crimes?  There's a world of difference between Legal Immigrants and Illegal Immigrants in terms of behavior over time.

Illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes against other illegal immigrants than against American citizens.  Illegal immigrant victims are less likely to report being victimized to authorities for fear of being deported.  Illegal immigrants committing crimes are certainly less likely to be reported to authorities if people know that they are members of Transnational Gangs.

Were the Mariel Boatlift aliens more or less law abiding?  They were less law abiding, and no one disputes this.  The present state of our border has caused Venezuela to release prisoners and send them off on the road to the Rio Grande into America.  It cuts their budgets.  There is a cooperative effort from pols to gaslight the rest of us for refusing to back down from the position that allowing people to freely enter America unvetted (which we're pretty close to) is simply intolerable and wrong.  

In fact, recent surveys indicate that most Cubans who arrived in the Mariel exodus are not much different from earlier exiles. The majority of both groups identify with the Republican Party, pay their taxes, value home ownership and American citizenship and practice Catholicism.

About 4,000 Mariel refugees are behind bars, doing time in state or federal prisons for crimes committed here. An additional 2,600 Mariel arrivals are held in custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. And 375 more have been deported to Cuba. That represents about 5% of those who came from Mariel.

 Mind you out of 125,000 that arrived on "Marielita" boatlifts, Castro certainly did empty jails and mental institutions among those arrivals.

 

[Fuzzy Bear]

The crime rate for illegal immigrants is 100% unless they came as children. I don’t believe in demonizing them though.

Not quite true.  But the rate of illegal immigrants that commit crimes is 100% for those who re-enter the United States after having previously been deported.

The study in question talks about "immigrants".  What percentage of Illegal Immigrants commit crimes?  There's a world of difference between Legal Immigrants and Illegal Immigrants in terms of behavior over time.

Illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes against other illegal immigrants than against American citizens.  Illegal immigrant victims are less likely to report being victimized to authorities for fear of being deported.  Illegal immigrants committing crimes are certainly less likely to be reported to authorities if people know that they are members of Transnational Gangs.

Were the Mariel Boatlift aliens more or less law abiding?  They were less law abiding, and no one disputes this.  The present state of our border has caused Venezuela to release prisoners and send them off on the road to the Rio Grande into America.  It cuts their budgets.  There is a cooperative effort from pols to gaslight the rest of us for refusing to back down from the position that allowing people to freely enter America unvetted (which we're pretty close to) is simply intolerable and wrong.  

In fact, recent surveys indicate that most Cubans who arrived in the Mariel exodus are not much different from earlier exiles. The majority of both groups identify with the Republican Party, pay their taxes, value home ownership and American citizenship and practice Catholicism.

About 4,000 Mariel refugees are behind bars, doing time in state or federal prisons for crimes committed here. An additional 2,600 Mariel arrivals are held in custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. And 375 more have been deported to Cuba. That represents about 5% of those who came from Mariel.

 Mind you out of 125,000 that arrived on "Marielita" boatlifts, Castro certainly did empty jails and mental institutions among those arrivals.

 

Your figures do not include those released from prison who have remained in the US.  That's a pretty big omission.

[Santander]

Illegals shouldn't even be here though so any crime committed is one too many.

Liberals cannot comprehend the most basic principles.

[GP270watch]

The crime rate for illegal immigrants is 100% unless they came as children. I don’t believe in demonizing them though.

Not quite true.  But the rate of illegal immigrants that commit crimes is 100% for those who re-enter the United States after having previously been deported.

The study in question talks about "immigrants".  What percentage of Illegal Immigrants commit crimes?  There's a world of difference between Legal Immigrants and Illegal Immigrants in terms of behavior over time.

Illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes against other illegal immigrants than against American citizens.  Illegal immigrant victims are less likely to report being victimized to authorities for fear of being deported.  Illegal immigrants committing crimes are certainly less likely to be reported to authorities if people know that they are members of Transnational Gangs.

Were the Mariel Boatlift aliens more or less law abiding?  They were less law abiding, and no one disputes this.  The present state of our border has caused Venezuela to release prisoners and send them off on the road to the Rio Grande into America.  It cuts their budgets.  There is a cooperative effort from pols to gaslight the rest of us for refusing to back down from the position that allowing people to freely enter America unvetted (which we're pretty close to) is simply intolerable and wrong.  

In fact, recent surveys indicate that most Cubans who arrived in the Mariel exodus are not much different from earlier exiles. The majority of both groups identify with the Republican Party, pay their taxes, value home ownership and American citizenship and practice Catholicism.

About 4,000 Mariel refugees are behind bars, doing time in state or federal prisons for crimes committed here. An additional 2,600 Mariel arrivals are held in custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. And 375 more have been deported to Cuba. That represents about 5% of those who came from Mariel.

 Mind you out of 125,000 that arrived on "Marielita" boatlifts, Castro certainly did empty jails and mental institutions among those arrivals.

 

Your figures do not include those released from prison who have remained in the US.  That's a pretty big omission.

 The point is the vast majority of "Marieleta" arrivals became productive citizens, in fact they became Republican voting citizens. Probably in margins significant enough that gives the GOP control of the state of Florida, the irony should not be lost here.

[Del Tachi]

Illegal immigrants are criminal by definition.

[ingemann]

Full disclosure, I am pro immigration, against a border wall, think we should have a large scale amnesty for illegals, exc. That said, the reason for this statistic is very obvious, and most of you can probably guess what it is but won't say it out loud.

Beside the obvious and unspoken reason, there anre also other reasons.

1: Deportation of immigrants who commit crimes means a very low recidivism.
2: Criminal immigrants will usual target their own community, who are less likely to report the crime*.

*Murder rate is usual the best way to measure the real crime rate for a group, as it’s the least likely crime to be covered up.

[GALeftist]

A couple of moronic responses to this statistical fact:

1. "Any crime committed by an illegal immigrant is one too many" and the corollary "deporting illegal immigrants would lower the absolute number of crimes even if it increased the crime rate." While this is technically an argument against illegal immigration, it is a stronger argument against legal immigration and indeed the birth of natural-born citizens. Any time you increase the population of a country, the absolute number of crimes goes up. You can say that crime committed by citizens and/or legal immigrants is categorically different (I disagree, but it would at least make your position internally consistent), but if you say that, you are definitionally not concerned with lowering crime per se, and if you say that you are you are lying at least to your audience and possibly to yourself.

2. "All illegal immigrants are criminals because they immigrated illegally." While this is again technically true, if people actually believed this then Laken Riley would have gotten zero attention because her murder would have changed nothing. Her murderer would simply be a "criminal" just like every other illegal immigrant, and would deserve exactly the same response as any other illegal immigrant: deportation. Obviously, no one actually believes this. When people say that illegal immigrants are criminals, they are obviously referring to crimes that harm people, which mere illegal immigration does not.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I always thought this too, but Will Stancil actually taught me last month that this is statistical lie by retweeting out the breakouts by region of origin and 2nd gen American by race.

Nevertheless, crime is one of the dumbest reasons to oppose immigration. So many immigrants are essentially handpicked to pay tuition at US schools or take high paying jobs at big companies, often coming from significant wealth already.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

As long as this issue hurts Biden, I am fine. I am not actually that opposed to immigration.