Spot-on by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11); I wish more Democrats would to this, as the ENTIRE PREMISE of the Republicans’ smearing of immigrants – that supposedly they commit more crimes than native-born Americans – is FALSE. As Rep. Connolly says:
“So the correlation between immigration and crime is false, as you point out, Mr. Bier…I find it ironic that you characterized, correctly in my view, President Trump’s and Tom Homan’s approach to immigration as lawless, when they’re invoking law-and-order and crime as their rationale for their lawlessness. Could you expand on the lawlessness and the irony of the fact that, as you point out in your testimony, the crime rate among immigrants is half that of the native population.”
And as David J. Bier – director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute – puts it in response to Rep. Connolly:
“That’s right. I have a table in my written testimony you can look at – top 20 cities for immigration court filings over the last four years, 19 of those cities saw a decline in their homicide rate. If you look at all of the major cities, there’s a negative correlation between increasing numbers of immigrants and the homicide rate. So that means more immigrants, lower homicide rates; that holds true across the United States. So I think the correlation that’s trying to be made is…more illegal immigrants, more chaos, more crime. That does not hold. What we do see under this Administration is an increasing willingness to ignore the laws. As I mentioned, he signed an executive order that says he can ignore due process rights for people who are accused of being in the country illegally. This is an incredibly dangerous assertion of of authority and should be investigated by Congress.”
And finally, here’s Rep. Connolly:
“I would just argue that the premise of this hearing is false. We have local law enforcement cooperating with the local political leadership and it’s working – it’s bringing down crime rates. And the proposition that immigrants cause crime is false, in fact patently false as your testimony I think would demonstrate, Mr Bier. And the idea that these are sanctuary cities that need to be punished is simply a war on urban America.”
Bingo. But good luck breaking through the right-wing noise machine, as well as completely amoral/cynical/irresponsible politicians like Donald Trump and Glenn Youngkin, who demonize immigrants (and NOT just undocumented immigrants) to score political points, distract people from their own failed records, fear monger, demagogue, etc. It’s really disgusting, and by all rights, NOBODY should vote for anyone who does that. Of course, that would assume we lived in a well-informed country, where people immediately understood when a politician was blatantly lying to them, attempting to manipulate them, etc. But clearly, we don’t live in such a country, based on the fact that Republicans’ bashing of immigrants appears to work, politically, for them. Ugh.
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