COMMENTARY: Myths of immigrant crime

After two National Guard members were gunned down by an immigrant from Afghanistan, President Donald Trump seized on the shooting to escalate nativist fears of foreigners.

“This attack underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation,” he bellowed. He followed this up by vowing to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and even expel “anyone who is not a net asset to the United States.”

The shootings were a tragedy. The killer should be prosecuted and punished. But Trump’s immediate impulse — to demonize immigrants as a danger to the nation — is based on a falsehood.

Every serious study of the link between immigration and crime has come to the same conclusion: Foreigners are far less likely to violate the law than native-born Americans.

After reviewing the literature in the field, the National Science Foundation concluded: “In sum, despite public concerns and political rhetoric suggesting that immigration is an engine for crime, research has shown that it often either has no impact or may actually help protect communities. Such findings have led several prominent scholars to conclude that the link between immigration and crime is ‘misleading, to the extent of constituting mythology’ and that cities with high immigrant concentrations may be ‘some of the safest around.’”

One of those scholars, Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky, argues: “From Henry Cabot Lodge in the late 19th century to Donald Trump, anti-immigration politicians have repeatedly tried to link immigrants to crime, but our research confirms that this is a myth and not based on fact.”

Trump is a thoroughly American figure, the latest in a long line of demagogues who have ignited and exploited the resentment of outsiders for political gain. In the 1840s, the Know-Nothing movement excoriated Catholics as agents of the Pope. In the 1940s, more than 100,000 loyal Japanese Americans were interned on the West Coast as security risks. After 9/11, American Muslims were harassed, and mosques were vandalized.

Trump entered political life by falsely accusing Barack Obama of being foreign-born and ineligible to be president. He launched his campaign in 2015 by branding Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers and vowing to build a wall across the Southern border. As president, he derided immigrants from “shithole countries” and barred refugees who were fleeing persecution back home.

In his last campaign, Trump denounced immigrants for “poisoning the blood of our nation” and constantly invoked Laken Riley, a nursing student murdered by an illegal immigrant. As president, he has mounted highly publicized raids against undocumented immigrants, and now he is threatening a range of retaliation, including the “reverse migration” of any foreigner deemed “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

Trump has long believed that these tirades work for him politically because they cast him as the champion and protector of “real Americans” against nefarious “others.”

So it’s no surprise that he embraces the shooting as a welcome gift.

With his approval ratings continuing to sink, the story diverts attention from two issues that are causing him heartburn: rising prices and his friendship with the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Still, Trump’s history of connecting immigrants to crime is based on fantasy, not fact. For example, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, studied census data for residents born in 1990 and concluded, “native-born Americans were 267 percent more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants by age 33. Eleven percent of native-born Americans in that year-born cohort have been incarcerated compared to just 3 percent of immigrants. Other countries really are sending their best.”

The National Institute for Justice examined arrest records compiled by the state of Texas and reported: “The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”

There are many possible explanations for this vast discrepancy, including a fear among immigrants of being deported, but Abramitzky of Stanford says the main reason is the work ethic of newcomers and their strong incentive to build a new life here: “Recent waves of immigrants are more likely to be employed, married with children, and in good health,” maintains the economist. “Far from the rapists and drug dealers that anti-immigrant politicians claim them to be, immigrants today are doing relatively well and have largely been shielded from the social and economic forces that have negatively affected low-educated U.S.-born men.”

Trump, of course, will continue to spin his myths linking immigrants to crime, but no matter how many times he repeats them, they will remain false.

Steve Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. Contact at stevecokie@gmail.com.