Do Illegal Immigrants Commit Crimes at a Lower Rate Than US Citizens?
What You Have Been Told About Illegal Immigrant Crime Rates is Probably Not True
Some illegal immigrants commit crimes. We know that to be true but when illegal immigrants do commit crimes, those crimes are often downplayed by media reports that tell us illegal immigrants commit crimes at a rate that is substantially less than American citizens. A colleague of mine who is a well published researcher and professor of economics often points out that reports of illegal crimes are mostly anecdotal, while the research shows that in fact illegal immigrants commit crimes at a far lesser rate than American citizens.
If you Google the following phrase “do illegals commit less crimes than American citizens” you get the following results listing below in the exact order they appear on the first page of search results.
factcheck.org - Illegal immigrants are 47 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives.
news.northwest.edu - Immigrants are significantly less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born.
washingtonpost.com - There is strong evidence that all immigrants — in the United States legally or otherwise — are more law-abiding than native-born American citizens.
news.wisc.edu - Undocumented immigrants far less likely to commit crimes in U.S. than citizens.
Thecrimereport.org - Undocumented Immigrants Commit Far Fewer Crimes than U.S. Citizens: Study.
Even NPR gets in on the act, stating that “They found that undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime.”
So, it must be conclusive with all these articles and studies that illegal immigrants commit far less crimes than do American citizens. But is it? Let us take a closer look.
Much of the information relating to these claims comes from studies in the State of Texas, as referenced in a paper by the Cato Institute (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-10/working-paper-60.pdf). You might ask why. As the paper states, “Texas is the only state that records criminal convictions and arrests by immigration status.” So, the claims that “illegal immigrants commit crimes at a far lesser rate than American citizens” is based on statistics from one state. We have zero information on crimes by illegals in the other forty-nine states. As a researcher I would hesitate to make any generalized conclusion about the United States as a whole, based on information from one state. It is interesting that no other states collect this information, yet for most states and even the federal government collecting demographic information is a feature of every government document.
So, we only have studies from Texas to look at. Okay, then let us look at those studies. We will look at murder rates. One study reports the following:
“There were 937 people convicted of homicide in Texas in 2017. Of those, 844 were native-born Americans, 46 were illegal immigrants, and 47 were legal immigrants. The homicide conviction rate was 3.6 per 100,000 for native-born Americans, 2.5 per 100,000 for illegal immigrants, and 1.5 per 100,000 for legal immigrants. In 2017, homicide conviction rates for illegal and legal immigrants were 29 percent and 57 percent below those of natives.”
In Texas in 2017 there were 1,405 murders. We don’t know if the 937 convictions were for murders in 2017, or in prior years, but assuming 2017 is a good yearly average, then 468 murders were unsolved. How can you rely on coming to any conclusion about who is committing the murders, when one third of the murders go unsolved? What if illegal immigrants committed all those unsolved murders? Also, the above information is about people convicted of murder. What do you need to convict someone of murder? You need evidence. Evidence in the form of fingerprints, eyewitnesses, DNA, and financial or other records. Thinking about it, is there likely to be more evidence available for illegal immigrants or citizens? The government has fingerprints, photo IDs, auto records, employment records, and/or financial records of every American citizen. Do they have that same information on illegal immigrants? Of course not. One of the major pieces of evidence in criminal trials is eyewitnesses. Who is more likely to give eyewitness testimony? An American citizen living in the community or an illegal immigrant living off the grid?
The only conclusion that you can make from these quoted statistics is that if the police catch a murder suspect, and if that murder suspect is charged, and if that murders suspect is then convicted, it is more likely the person convicted will be a citizen than an illegal immigrant, on a per capita basis. But that does not mean citizens commit more murders per capita. It may mean the police are better able to arrest and convict citizens than they are illegals and that only makes sense, because getting evidence on citizens is far easier than getting the same evidence on illegal immigrants.
Further, the statistical research does not include information on the type of murder. As an example, for 2020 Texas reported that close to 21% of all homicides resulted from arguments and lover’s triangles whereas about 60% occurred during the commission of some felony such as a robbery, car theft, drug activity, or gang activity. We know domestic violence (arguments) results in homicides. While tragic, this information is important in assessing the threat of illegal immigrants. Is an illegal immigrant more likely to be engaged in a homicide as part of other felony activity, or because of domestic disputes? We simply don’t know. We do know that most illegal immigrants encountered crossing the Mexican border are single males, far outweighing the number of single females or families. It is logical to assume those single male illegal immigrants would not be committing homicides while engaged in domestic violence but when engaged in felonies.
The statistics become even more bizarre when you look at larceny. The study shows:
“The larceny conviction rate for illegal immigrants was lower than for legal immigrants and native-born Americans in Texas in 2017. For every 100,000 native-born Americans, 179.3 were convicted of larceny, while the conviction rates for illegal immigrants and legal immigrants were 42.1 and 49.7 per 100,000, respectively. The larceny conviction rate for illegal immigrants was 77 percent below that of natives.”
The FBI tells us that “The rate of estimated larceny-thefts in 2017 was 1,694.4 per 100,000 inhabitants.” So, in 2017 Texas convicted 271 people out of each 1,700 reported crimes. That is a conviction rate of 16%. Remember that is reported larceny. How many unreported larcenies occurred? I know many people who have had personal property stolen from their homes and cars and who never bothered to report it, assuming the crooks would never be found. Who is more likely to report a larceny, a citizen, or an illegal immigrant? Greater conviction rates could be attributable to it being far easier to collect evidence on citizens who have employment, financial, and even prior criminal records as opposed to illegals living in the shadowy underworld. Further most of the 84% who did not get convicted may have been illegals. We simply do not know.
The studies being quoted about “illegal immigrants committing less crimes than native Americans” are flawed studies because they don’t consider the unsolved crimes. There is plenty of logical reasoning to expect that the chance of convicting an American citizen is far greater than convicting an illegal immigrant who lives in a shadow world and works in an underground economy, where illegals often do not report or testify against other illegals.
Further, those arguments are straw men arguments. It is irrelevant whether illegals commit crimes at greater or lesser rates than do citizens.
The study also reports that:
“In 2017, Texas police arrested 663,579 natives, 27,998 illegal immigrants, and 36,245 legal immigrants. For every 100,000 people in each subpopulation, 2,830 native-born Americans, 1,546 illegal immigrants, and 1,191 legal immigrants were arrested.”
The website conversation.com reports that “In reality, about 11% of all serious crimes result in an arrest.” So, if you do the math, the 27,998 illegal immigrants arrested in Texas accounts for about 255,000 crimes.
And that is just in Texas. There are 3,000 reported crimes per 100,000 people in the US according to the FBI. That would mean about 27,000 crimes in total (reported and unreported). Even if illegals commit one third less crimes than US citizens (per the NPR article), that would be about 18,000 crimes per 100,000 people. If we have 15 million illegals in the US, that would be 270,000 crimes that would not happen if those illegals were not in the country.
Isn't controlling our borders worth stopping 270,000 crimes?
CHECK OUT MY BOOKS.
The Secrets to Raising Capital
The Key to Landing a Job - The Interview
The Secrets to Job Success or How To One Up Your Boss
NEED HELP WITH YOUR BUSINESS? Raising capital, business plans, financial forecasts, part time CFO, accounting systems, financial strategy or just cleaning up a mess. I can help.
Connect With Me - Professor Manahan: