One of the key arguments advanced in favor of cracking down even harder on illegal immigration is that illegal immigrants are coming here to commit crimes. Some have even claimed that these immigrants are not people, perhaps not even worthy of the term “animal.” One narrative, which is clearly hyperbolic, contends that there is a massive wave of crime being committed by illegal immigrants. This is, of course, the myth of the criminal immigrant. As a matter of statistical fact, illegal immigrants commit crime at a rate lower than native born Americans. Illegal immigration also does not increase violent crime. As such, the argument that illegal immigration must be stopped because of the massive criminal threat they present has no logical merit. It does, however, have considerable emotional appeal—which, in the realm of politics, is far more valuable than logical merit.
Those who accept this argument will generally not be swayed by the facts: they will tend to be be suspicious of any source that denies what they feel is true, especially since these sources have been branded as biased liberals or fake news. They will also, naturally enough, feel the weight of their fear and anger—they outweigh any facts when it comes to feeling one’s way through political and ethical problems. That said, there is actually a very good argument that shows illegal immigration does increase crime in America.
It might be suspected that the easy and obvious argument is to point out that illegal immigrants are, by definition, breaking the law. As such, each illegal immigrant increases the amount of crime. The problem with this argument is that it conflates breaking a law with committing a crime. When a person is in the United States unlawfully, they are engaged in unlawful presence—which a civil infraction rather than a felony or misdemeanor. That is, it is more like a parking violation than burglary.
It could be countered that this criticism is splitting legal hairs. The obvious reply, other than the fact that law is all about hair splitting, is that this distinction does matter. The force of the argument about cracking down on illegal immigration because of the crimes they commit comes from the claim that they commit serious crimes (theft, rape, assault and murder) that harm society. The argument would have far less punch if the justification for the crackdown focused on the equivalent of parking violations.
To be fair, there are those who argue that all laws should be enforced if they are to remain on the books and to fail to do so erodes the rule of law. On this view, the crackdown on illegal immigrants would be justified even if the only law they broke was by being here unlawfully. Of course, adopting this view would require applying it consistently and demanding the strict enforcement of all laws, such as the laws against adultery in many of the states (including New York). For those who would prefer an alternative, there remains an eminently reasonable argument.
While illegal immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than native born Americans, they do commit crimes. So, if there were fewer (or no) illegal immigrants, then there would be less crime in the United States. As such, crime could be reduced by expending more resources and effort combating illegal immigrants. While it is true that reducing the number of illegal immigrants would probably reduced the amount of crime in the United States, there are some obvious concerns with this approach.
One somewhat silly reply is that this approach is analogous to proposing reducing crime by reducing the number of births. After all, if fewer people are born, then there will tend to be less crime. However, this seems to be a rather odd and ineffective way to reduce crime. Likewise for focusing on illegal immigrants—while they do commit crimes, if the goal is to reduce crime, then this goal would be better served by focusing resources directly on criminal activity. This is because the resources expended focusing on illegal immigrants would be focused on a group that commits crimes at a lower rate than native born Americans. It would be much more effective to focus on those who are committing crimes—be they Americans on illegal immigrants. As such, focusing on illegal immigration would be a poor way to reduce the criminal threat to Americans and thus that sort of argument has little merit.
Naturally, other arguments can be advanced for focusing on illegal immigration, such as the stock border control argument or economic arguments. These are, however, obviously distinct from the crime reduction argument—one that really has little or no weight.
Mike, it may be true that illegal immigrants commit fewer violent crimes. But what about crimes like identity theft? Forging documents? Driving without a license? Practicing an occupation without a license? Restaurant licensing? Dumping without the proper permits? Building code violations? Dog fighting? Cock fighting? Smuggling?
“It does, however, have considerable emotional appeal—which, in the realm of politics, is far more valuable than logical merit.”
This is very true. It is true when talking about gun control – when the facts and statistics demonstrate that gun violence has gone down while gun ownership has gone up; it is true when making the claim that despite the reach of the ACA, thousands of women will lose access to basic healthcare if federal funding to clinics is curtailed, and it is also true when stories like this one are mis-quoted, mis-represented, and twisted to fuel the hatred of Donald Trump by using a version of his words to claim that he is a racist who would call Mexicans “Animals”.
But you are correct – it is a fact of life here in America, and perhaps the rest of the world. What is true does not matter, but what we believe is true – or rather, what we can be convinced is true is what’s really important.
I had a conversation with an old friend over the weekend – this person is quite high-up in the political battle of healthcare – while not a politician herself she is engaged daily with politicians in crafting policy. Her leanings are definitely to the left of mine, yet we agreed on many points in our discussion. At the heart of her frustration is the fact that for policymakers on both sides, the idea of doing anything meaningful is almost always secondary to just plain winning.
So, in that context, I guess anything goes. People vote based on emotion – so if you can get them to believe, or rather feel things your way, you will win, and that’s what it’s all about.
So on the one hand, you have the fear of drug trafficking, of murder, of rape, of gang-violence committed by illegal immigrants. Those who fear these things don’t care about the statistical charts any more than someone who is staring down the barrel of a gun wielded by a criminal would be comforted by the knowledge that gun violence is on the downswing. It’s fear. It motivates.
On the other hand, you have the very popular hatred of racism and xenophobia, and the constant barrage of charges against Trump. Hatred, too, is a motivator – and those who hate Trump for this perceived racism will accept any comment, in or out of context, that fuels this emotion. Those who hate him for this don’t care how the economy is doing, or that his tax overhaul benefits millions of Americans, or that there have been strides made in North Korea, or any of dozens of positive things he has done for America. None of it counts – and to be fair, very little of it actually reaches them through the news sources they follow. It’s all or nothing – and in this case, it’s nothing.
So to your first point, which is the only one I’ll address here – it’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. It’s true that Trump used the word “Animals” in the context of illegal immigration – but the context was much more specific than just that. He was having a conversation with sheriff’s offices about the difficulty they are having with MS-13 gang members, and the restrictions on using ICE in dealing with them. He did not say “All Mexicans are animals”, as much of the reportage would have you believe. He didn’t even say “Some Mexicans are animals”.
Sheriff Margaret Mims, of Fresno County, California, was speaking about how, in certain cases, a known member of the MS-13 gang can come into this country illegally, and her office is unable to do anything about it via ICE unless they have reached a certain threshold.
Trump’s response, specific to Mims’ comment, was that there are very bad people – (and yes, he did use the word “animals”) who come here and commit heinous crimes, but our laws are such that they are frequently released, cross the border again, and commit crimes. He did not apply this to all Mexicans, he did not even apply this to any Mexicans. He applied this, in context, and to the point that Mims was making, to members of the MS-13 gang – who are vicious criminals, and who can be likened to animals.
But that doesn’t really matter, does it? A little bit of editing, a juicy quote for the headlines clipped just a little bit, and voila! It’s a win.
This misquote has sparked some strong debate, and has been walked back by many who reported it.
Those who like to fall in line with the “Trump Is a Horrible Racist” narrative, might do well to avail themselves of the teaching moment put forth by the Student News Daily, who used this most recent quote as an example of, and a trigger for discussion of, rampant media bias in this country.
This sort of thing is America – whether it is about abortion, guns, or illegal immigration. Those who oppose Trump are fine with this kind of bias – it doesn’t matter if MS-13 is a big problem in this country, to them Trump is a bigger one. They care less about dealing with a vicious gang than they do about “winning”, and thus the headlines. Only this time it backfired.
The truth does not matter to the mainstream, Americans will rush to their emotions and accept even the wildest claims if they support their own gut feelings. While others on this forum are more cynical than I about this, I think that you are above this, and you have an intellectual, professional, and pedagogical responsibility to do even the most minuscule amount of fact-checking yourself, and be careful that you, as a professional philosopher, are not caught up in this wave. Truth is supposed to matter to you, if only on a professional level.
I agree the immigrants bring crime argument is a bust. However, it is legitimate to consider the following. The population of the United States has doubled in my lifetime. How far do we want to keep going in that direction?
I’ve seen the future here in Florida, because we receive a great deal of internal “immigration” from other states. In South Florida particularly, and all along most of the coastline, we’re reached the point where we can’t expand the roads to accommodate the increase in traffic without knocking down trillions of dollars worth of existing structures. And yet, the new comers keep coming, coming, coming, squeezing in where ever they can.
Will a billion people fit in America? Would we want to live here if they could?
I’m most definitely! not a Trump voter, but it’s hard to argue against the idea that if immigrants enter illegally they should be deported and sent to the back of the line like everybody else. But we shouldn’t demonize them, but instead politely and firmly send them to the back of the line. If we want to help people in trouble in other countries, ok, we can do that.
I actually moved to Florida with the express intent of ruining it for the people who already lived here. I’m doing very well at this. Don’t tell Trump; he’ll presumably want to deport me back to Maine.
On the other hand, once the nukes arc over the poles none of this is going to matter anyway. So there’s that.
This is interesting.
Many immigration advocates argue that immigrants have much lower crime rates than natives (see this op-ed and this paper). As my colleague Jessica Vaughan and I pointed in a paper some years ago, however, the picture is far from clear. While there are other issues, the biggest problem with studying immigrant crime is that states and localities do not systematically track the country of birth, citizenship, or legal status of those they arrest, convict, or incarcerate. But the federal government does track the citizenship of those it convicts. New data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission shows that of those convicted of federal crimes between 2011 and 2016, 44.2 percent were not U.S. citizens — 21.4 percent, if immigration crimes are excluded. In comparison, non-citizens are 8.4 percent of the adult population. Of this 8.4 percent, about 4 percent are illegal immigrants and about 4 percent are legal immigrants.
https://cis.org/Camarota/NonCitizens-Committed-Disproportionate-Share-Federal-Crimes-201116
Mike, do you dispute this fact?
New data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission shows that of those convicted of federal crimes between 2011 and 2016, 44.2 percent were not U.S. citizens — 21.4 percent, if immigration crimes are excluded
I finally got around to reading this link. I would say that the Center for Immigrant Studies is a pretty credible source, and thus carries a lot of weight.
Unfortunately, sources like this are rarely used; people are only interested in “facts” that support their gut feelings – and when presented with data to the contrary, they tend to dismiss or doubt the credibility of that data.
Here’s another article from the CIS:
https://cis.org/Examination-US-Immigration-Policy-and-Serious-Crime
This article spends several paragraphs citing decades of statistics that seemingly support the idea that immigrants, both legal and illegal, commit crimes at a rate consistent with their relative numbers, or below that of native-born Americans. However, for those of us who choose to read below the fold, it actually makes the opposite case.
Our statistics are based on arrests, convictions, and incarcerations. In fact, whenever the statistics show a disproportionate level of imprisoned illegal immigrants, many resort to the oft-used and well-worn argument of bias in the system – of bigotry, or xenophobia, or just plain “anti-brown-people-syndrome”. Based on the data that we have or use, the conclusions are not indicative of the crime rates among illegals, but only the arrest rates. The CIS research cited above shows why the arrest rates are disproportionately low, and and thus present an incomplete or inaccurate dataset for drawing conclusions about crime rates.
Crimes committed by immigrants (legal and illegal) go unreported at a very high rate
“…An especially ominous reason for underreporting is that what most Americans would call crime many immigrants consider to be tradition, or if a crime, a “family matter” not requiring outside interference. In this view, police are not supposed to supplant patriarchal authority in resolving disputes…”
This phenomenon has also been studied extensively with regard to disproportionate levels of domestic violence, assault, and homicide among African Americans.
“…Immigrant criminals often know how to make themselves scarce, and not necessarily by remaining or even operating within the U.S. A large portion of ethnic crime in this country can be linked to international networks. “Hundreds of thousands of people are being moved globally by highly organized criminal enterprises operating on all continents,” noted Robert Perito, director of the State Department’s Office of International Criminal Justice a few years ago. “Their primary target is the United States.”
Other factors include phenomena known as “The Mexican Commute” – where criminals will cross the border to commit crimes in the US, then head back to Mexico to escape prosecution.
Incomplete record keeping is another – law enforcement officials do not keep records on the national origin of the perpetrator.
The article is long, and requires somewhat of a commitment to read and parse, but the information is accurate and unbiased, and based on complete (and completely reported) studies.
To say that “It has been proven that illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans” is an incomplete statement, based on biased information and thus reduced to nothing more than a talking point.
To say that “Illegal immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate …” is similar.
The Center for Immigrant Studies, which has no political motivation, no “skin in the game”, presents some very compelling data that would indicate that the problem is worse than we generally think.
I read this post a few times – I actually composed a long-ish response to it this morning, but it somehow got lost in the ether when I hit the “Post Comment” button. Ah,well. Here’s the gist of it:
“…It does, however, have considerable emotional appeal—which, in the realm of politics, is far more valuable than logical merit.
Those who accept this argument will generally not be swayed by the facts: they will tend to be be suspicious of any source that denies what they feel is true, especially since these sources have been branded as biased liberals or fake news. “
This is a very true statement – it applies to everything we think or do, and is the basis for arguments for and against gun control, abortion, and many other issues we worry about today. Proponents of gun control, for example, (understandably) worked into a fearful emotional state with the headlines of a school shooting, will completely ignore the statistics of increased gun ownership and decreased gun violence over the last two or three decades, and insist that we are in the midst of an epidemic.
It’s rather humorous that the article you link on “The Myth of the Criminal Alien” is so close to a word-for-word statistical analysis of gun violence that you can simply swap out a few words and have a fresh argument. Take paragraph four, for example:
“Immigrant populations in the United States have been growing fast for decades now. Crime in the same period, however, has moved in the opposite direction, with the national rate of violent crime today well below what it was in 1980.”
And with just a few substitutions,
“Gun ownership” in the United States [has] been growing fast for decades now. Gun crimes in the same period, however, [have] moved in the opposite direction, with the national rate of violent crime today well below what it was in 1990.”
Abortion, of course, is the same scenario. One of your recent posts relied on the emotional impact of the statement, “women who rely on these clinics will lose access to basic prenatal and maternal healthcare services”, without any sort of evidence to back it up. My admittedly sarcastic reference to all the provisions of the ACA that take care of this were not addressed. Your point was made – once the statement is “out there”, no one is interested in the details.
I think that your entire post is based on the twisting of words and policy, starting with the very first paragraph:
“Some have even claimed that these immigrants are not people, perhaps not even worthy of the term “animal.”
An obvious dig at Trump, which is no less than expected. And those who respond with emotion to these sorts of things will rally round – “Yeah, yeah! What a racist! it’s unbelievable that we have a President who thinks and says these things.
Unbelievable is right. The fact is that these statements were so taken out of context that CNN, the Associated Press, the Washington Post and others recanted their headlines, removed their tweets, and in some cases, actually apologized for their misleading stories. But, just like your own statements, they’re “out there”; once the impact has been made, it remains.
The fact is that this entire quote was taken from a discussion that Trump was having with the Sheriff of Fresno County specifically about MI-6. He never mentioned Mexicans – he didn’t even specify a demographic – he said, with direct reference to the gang, “Bad people are coming across the border”. Nor was it an overview of general immigration policy – it was an answer to direct questions posed by the sheriff, regarding her frustrations with the regulations she had to follow before calling ICE, even with known criminals – like the members of MI-6 that she brought up.
I understand that you are a liberal and that you hate Trump – but I also know that your profession is largely about truth and logic – and as such, I would really expect better than this from you.
The fact is that most of what Trump says about illegal immigration and crime is not as you characterize it – that he is claiming that most illegal immigrants come here to commit crimes – but rather, he is talking specifically about the criminals themselves – who commit crimes at a rate of 100%. It is a neat forensic trick to re-cast the debate to your terms, but that’s just about winning, not about finding a solution.
The hypocrisy, of course, is that top Democrats have been saying the same things for years – making the same arguments about crime, about their effect on economy, about waves of illegals, about border security, and yes, even about the wall.
“67 Percent Of The Births” At A Los Angeles County Hospital Were To “Illegal Alien Mothers” Adding That “California Needs To Build A School A Day To Keep Up With Incoming Immigrant Children.”
“For Every Seven Immigrants Who Enter The Job Market, One Blue-Collar American Worker Loses A Job.” -Harry Reid
Reid also proposed cutting the rate of legal immigration from 1 million per year to 325,000. In that context, the worst that one can say about Trump is that he lacks originality.
“”We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.” – Bill Clinton
“Illegal Immigrants should have to learn English, and “Go To The End Of The Line” – Ted Kennedy
There’s more here.
I guess the narrative that Trump is a racist, bigot, xenophobe carries a lot more weight than the debate that has been going on for more than two decades.
I guess my main point is that your entire post is based on the purposeful mis-characterization of what Trump says – and to the extent that you are responding to arguments that are made up interpretations that do not rely on facts, the post is kind of a waste of time, isn’t it? The fact that you would sink to the level of re-posting an obvious lie right from the start is disturbing.
Oops. MI 6? Hardly. I meant MS 13, of course. Must be the heat.
Great post, DH. Much better than I could have done.
Like you, I was immediately and strongly struck by the parallels between the arguments for tightening up on gun owners and tightening up on illegal immigrants.So much so that I could barely focus on the actual content of Mike’s post. There are differences in the actual arguments on both issues, but the treatment of the presentation is copy-paste.
I confess I have no intuition how Americans think of the actual issue of illegal immigration. I can see no argument at all – moral, legal, practical – that I could respect for favouring or encouraging illegal immigration, and I find the “sanctuary city” idea so irrational that I am concerned about a breakdown in cohesion in America, with consequences for the rest of the world.
And yes, I believe that laws should be enforced, and if laws are not enforced, then it’s the legislators’ job to repeal them. This is less an ethical issue than a practical one: if some laws are enforced and others aren’t, the law falls into disrespect. I imagine a few adultery prosecutions among the political class in NY might get their attention. 🙂