From the tragic murder of a University of Georgia student to the New York City police officer who was punched in the face, migrants who cross the southern border are being blamed for surging violence.
Donald Trump, Fox News and nearly every right-wing media outlet have sounded the alarm so loudly that many polls now show immigration is the nation’s No. 1 concern.
“There’s crime, there’s violent crime, there’s ‘migrant crime,’” Trump told Laura Ingraham on Fox News earlier this month, boasting that he’d coined the phrase. “It’s going to be worse than any other form of crime.’’
Imagine how bad it has been in San Francisco, which has three times the number of immigrants than the national average. If crime is at record highs around the country, it must be skyrocketing in San Francisco.
If that doesn’t ring true to you, there’s a good explanation: Crime is down in San Francisco, just as it is around the nation. There is no immigrant crime wave, not in the real world. It is the invention of politicians who hope to prey on people’s fears to advance themselves.
It is true that there are undocumented immigrants — “illegals,” as President Biden clumsily referred to them in last week’s State of the Union address — who have committed horrific crimes.
Of course, suburban moms also commit crimes. So do Catholic priests, people with butterfly tattoos, those who honor the sabbath, fans of Black Sabbath, professional football players, hiking enthusiasts and even San Francisco Giants fans. That’s the a sad reality in a nation in which more than 11 million crimes were committed in 2022, the most recent year that data was available.
If immigrants are the problem, how do you explain that that crime is actually falling even as immigration is rising? The answer is that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than American citizens, according to a recent study.
Trump dismisses such inconvenient facts as “fake news.’’
“The murder rate in the U.S. — I don’t know if you know this because the press never talks about it — is the highest it’s been in 45 years,’’ Trump said repeatedly in his first run for office. “Nobody knows that — the highest it’s been in 45 years.’’
And why do you suppose the media didn’t tell you that?
Ex // Top Stories
Her new show opens this weekend and runs through Oct. 20
A series of recent scandals have featured corrupt, incompetent, or unqualified commission appointees.
The federal government will make it easier to distribute methadone to patients suffering from opioid-use disorder, but California must follow suit before The City can…
Because it wasn’t true. The murder rate, when Trump repeated this, was among the lowest it had been in the past 45 years.
And now he’s back at it, reminding crowds of the undocumented immigrant who picked a gun off the ground and shot Kate Steinle along San Francisco’s Pier 14 in 2015. Immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our nation, Trump says, as he promises mass deportations if elected.
The dishonesty of those who scapegoat immigrants is staggering. The Heritage Foundation, which calls itself “the most influential conservative group in America,” posts an oft-repeated statistic on its website claiming that nearly two out of three federal arrests involve non-citizens.
Sounds bad unless you read the fine print. What the Heritage Foundation doesn’t mention is that the statistics, which come from a 2018 Department of Justice report, show that 95% of those arrests are for immigration violations — not murder, rape, robbery or shoplifting.
It’s like reporting that women are to blame for prostitution because only 30% of those arrested for the crime are men.
It would be easy to laugh off such ignorance if it didn’t come at such a cost. I teach University of California students in Washington, D.C., a sizable number of whom are first- or second-generation Americans.
These students embody the American dream. They are the offspring of immigrant parents who devoted their lives to providing their children a better lot. Statistics show that second-generation immigrants graduate college and open job-creating businesses at a higher rate than other Americans.
Yet when they walk down the street, many assume them to be, in the words of our previous president “people that have lots of problems ... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume are good people.”
President Biden vowed in his State of the Union address not to demonize immigrants. That’s a start. Those who love this country need to go further. Americans need to be reminded that immigrants are the lifeblood of the nation.
It is perfectly reasonable to debate the proper level of immigration, who should be granted citizenship and the best way to secure the border.
But it is not reasonable to spread rumors, foment fear and cast aspersions in hopes that an angry mob will boost your political prospects. It’s not just disingenuous, divisive and dangerous — it’s un-American.
