There’s a flip side to the commentary I posted yesterday, “Good Idea: Deporting Criminal Aliens,” in which I argued that it makes sense to deport illegal aliens convicted of crimes and sitting in Virginia jails — a position I still support, by the way. However, focusing on the criminality of a relatively few illegal aliens does tend to unfairly stigmatize the whole group.
There are many things that can legitimately be said about illegal immigration: It depresses wages for unskilled Americans, and it adds a burden to schools and hospitals. But it does not threaten to swamp Americans in a wave of crime.
Indeed, according to a study by the Immigration Policy Center, illegal immigrants have significantly lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans. Some interesting factoids from the study:
- Even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent.
- Among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was five times higher.
- The foreign-born incarceration rate in 2000 was nearly two-and-a-half times less than the 1.7 percent rate for native born non-Hispanic white men and almost 17 times less than the 11.6 percent rate for native-born black men.
- Native-born Hispanic men were nearly seven times more likely to be in prison than foreign-born Hispanic men in 2000, while the incarceration rate of native-born non-Hispanic white men was almost three times higher than that of foreign-born white men.
Bottom line: The shorter the time spent in the United States, the less likely an illegal immigrant is to run afoul of the law. The longer the time spent here, the more likely aliens are to become criminals. And we want them to acculturate to our culture? Maybe we have something to learn from them.
Caveat: You always have to be cautious dealing with data like this, which the Immigration Policy Center is spinning in the most pro-immigrant light. I would ask this question: Are the study authors comparing apples to apples? Is the incarceration rate the most valid unit of comparison? Why not the conviction rate? Presumably, people convicted of a first or second crime are less likely to be incarcerated for lengthy periods of time than career criminals. Illegal immigrants, being new to the country, have a lot of catching up to do. I don’t know the answers — I’m just asking questions, trying to reach the truth.
