Worth repeating: The immigrant crime wave is a myth; there's no national emergency

Study shows, from 1870 through 2020, immigrant men had a lower incarceration rate than U.S.-born men.

Trump has tried for years to convince Americans that the nation is overrun with undocumented immigrants murdering, raping and robbing — in short, committing most of the country’s crime. It’s a myth, but Trump obviously believes that repeating the myth will make it true for people who prefer to blame alien invaders — and not native-born Americans — for crime.

“Trump and other Republicans have suggested that immigrants are especially likely to be criminals. They point to a few anecdotes. But the data shows the opposite: Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes,” The Times reported last year. “There are genuine issues with the border and illegal immigration, but more crime is not one of them.”

And yet the myth persists. It helps the Trump Regime justify a hard line on immigrants, even those who commit no crime. If you believe you’ve convinced a majority of Americans that immigrants murder, rape and rob, the next step is declaring a national emergency, eschewing due process and deporting brown men with tattoos.

While Trump is loud and consistent on this, his strain of immigrant bigotry has been around for a long time.

“The tendency to associate immigration and crime has been pervasive throughout U.S. history,” say the authors of a comprehensive report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. “In 1891, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge advocated closing the border, warning that Italian immigrants were ‘members of the Mafia, a secret society… using murder as a means of maintaining discipline.’”

Congressional speeches on immigration were twice as likely to mention crime than were speeches on other topics — a practice of representatives and senators for at least 150 years.

You read that correctly: 150. The NBER researchers studied all aspects of immigrant crime from 1870 to 2020.

I’ve read all sorts of reports on a broad range of topics. It’s rare to see one covering such a lengthy period, and with the evident rigor of the NBER report, published in 2023 and revised last year.

The NBER has been around since 1920. It was formed in the Progressive Era to provide sound economic data on labor, income, business cycles and other topics. It delivers hundreds of reports each year.

On immigrant crime, NBER researchers looked specifically at incarceration rates among immigrants relative to native-born men and, even more specifically, native-born white men.

As the Trump regime continues to exaggerate and lie about immigrants accused of crimes, as it tries to defend its reckless handling of deportations, I offer some highlights from the NBER study:

Source: NBER

• Overall, from 1870 through 2020, immigrant men from all countries had a lower incarceration rate than U.S.-born men.

• Today U.S-born men account for the vast majority of incarcerated individuals.

• Recent waves of immigrants were 50% to 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born men. They were 30% less likely to be incarcerated compared to U.S.-born white men.

• Mexican and Central American immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born men since 1960.

• Since 2005, Mexican and Central American immigrants have been more likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born white men. But researchers found that the difference was largely due to immigration-related offenses — migrants placed in detention at U.S. border facilities.

• Researchers confronted the possibility that immigrants have a lower incarceration rate because of the high level of deportations that have taken place since the 1990s. But the study also found lower incarceration rates among immigrants who are U.S. citizens and not subject to deportation. Plus, the downward trend started in the 1960s, three decades before the U.S. ramped up deportations. Also this: “Immigrants who have been convicted of a crime are typically deported after serving their sentences.”

• Less-educated immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated because of their high level of labor force participation; they have been better shielded from structural changes in the economy, such as globalization and technological change, than their native-born counterparts.

• Mexican and Central American immigrants are significantly less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born men employed in the same sectors of the economy.

• “Our long-run perspective,” the authors write, “enables us to document that immigrants not only have lower incarceration propensities than the U.S.-born today, but that they have experienced similar or lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born throughout American history.”

I thought some of this information would be helpful should you engage anyone who tries to defend the Trump Regime as it sets out to fulfill the old bigot’s fantasy of deporting millions of people, most of who have been living quietly, if fearfully, in the country and contributing to the economy — as well as our Social Security system — without breaking laws.