Illegal Immigrant Crime
The New York Times claims that Republicans are wrong to say there is a surge of illegal immigrant crime under Biden, because “U.S. rates of crime and immigration have moved in opposite directions in recent years.”
IN FACT, the NY Times is conflating association with causation, a fallacy that high schoolers are taught to avoid. Here are 5 more canards that the media uses to understate the crime rates of illegal immigrants:
- They combine the data on illegal immigrants with legal immigrants, who are very law-abiding because they must pass a criminal background check to immigrate.
- They use blatantly dishonest measures to calculate crime rates, like dividing the number of NON-CITIZENS in prison by the TOTAL number of ALL immigrants in the United States.
- They fail to account for the fact that most criminals are repeat offenders, and the U.S. deports 150,000 non-citizen criminal convicts per year, thus reducing the number who remain in the U.S.
- They fail to account for the fact that racial minorities who commit violent crimes in the U.S. are significantly less likely to be caught than white violent criminals.
- They fail to account for the fact that the vast bulk of illegal immigrants commit identity fraud and/or tax evasion but are rarely prosecuted for these crimes, even though they are federal felonies punishable by up to five years in prison.
