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Undocumented aliens are not associated with higher rates of crime
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CC Photo: amaderson
Although we are proponents of legal, not illegal immigration, sometimes the rhetoric of the far right becomes so warped that I cannot help but shed light on their propaganda. One of their ongoing populust rants is their proposition that illegal immigrants commit an excess of crime.
On June 25, the Sutherland Institute, a conservative Utah based non-profit think tank released a study showing that undocumented immigrants account for less than five percent of Utah state prisoners and less than four percent of county-jail inmates.
The Sutherland study reinforces a more comprehensive 2008 report by AILA (American Immigration Law Foundation) showing that incarceration rates for every ethnic group without exception are the lowest for immigrants, especially Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans, who make up the bulk of the undocumented population. In fact, they found that immigrants have much lower rates of incarceration than native born Americans, even among high school dropouts.
Of course, this does not console the family of Denny’s cook Stephanie Anderson who was fatally shot last week here in Albuquerque by Salvadoran criminals associated with the MS-13 gang.
The point is that crimes committed by vast majority of undocumented immigrants, if they do commit a crime, are typically for document fraud and overstaying visas, not violent crimes like murder and rape. Keep this clearly in mind in the coming months when you hear conservative groups shamelessly use unscientific anecdotal evidence to derail comprehensive immigration reform and wrongly associate immigrants with crime.
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