Little done to track migrant crime

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Michael Kiefer

The Arizona Republic

Undocumented immigrants are causing a crime wave in Arizona: True or false?

Last year, a national poll indicated that a third of all Americans and 46 percent of Phoenix residents believe that immigrants significantly increase the crime rate.

The perception is that, yes, they are; the truth is, no one is keeping track.

And the only statistics available that single out the immigration status of defendants and criminals - prison and jail populations, and felonies prosecuted in the county - suggest that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a rate virtually proportionate to their numbers in the general population.

There is no question that undocumented immigrants are flooding across the border and that Phoenix's Spanish-speaking population is growing. Illegal immigration is the No. 1 issue for Phoenix residents, according to a 2006 Pew Research Center poll.

The immigration crisis is very real, but it inspires a lot of hyperbole.

And a lot of media coverage:

On Feb. 2, an undocumented immigrant in west Phoenix was charged with stabbing and seriously injuring a man who had just finished a military tour in Iraq. On Feb. 18, a man on a bicycle was run down by an undocumented immigrant in north Phoenix, police say. On Feb. 25, an undocumented immigrant was charged with raping a 6-year-old girl in south Phoenix.

In March, a man accused of kidnapping and assaulting his girlfriend was deported to Mexico right before he could be indicted, but police say he returned to Arizona 11 days later and stabbed his female cousin to death.

Court officials, prosecutors and legislators are quarreling over how to enforce voter-approved Proposition 100, which denies bail to undocumented immigrants accused of serious crimes.

The truth is, as serious as they are, put in a larger news context, many of the crimes would never make it to TV news or see newsprint if they had been committed by legal citizens.

But the hype has reached fever pitch, and radio talk show hosts work themselves into a frenzy on the topic.

They're not alone. One widely circulated e-mail cited the Los Angeles Times as saying that 95 percent of murder warrants and 75 percent of people on the most-wanted list in Los Angeles were undocumented immigrants. "I saw that e-mail, and it's wrong," said Mesa Police Chief George Gascón a former assistant police chief in that city."By and large, criminality of Hispanics in LA is very proportionate to their size in the population," Gascón said.

The same is true for Mesa, he said, where slightly more than half of all violent crimes are committed by Anglos and one-third by Hispanics, roughly proportionate to the population.

Data lacking

Valley police departments don't keep track of the numbers of crimes committed by immigrants, legal or illegal, because they consider immigration to be a federal responsibility. And the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency mostly concentrates on human- and drug-smuggling operations without comparing its notes with law enforcement in general. The courts don't keep track, either.

"We don't know the full dimensions of the problem for what I have called the conspiracy of silence of police forces and other actors in the criminal justice system," Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said. "A lot of people in positions of authority do not want to know the immigration status of criminals."

Thomas ran for office on a platform of curtailing illegal immigration. Records kept by his office count undocumented immigrants in 10 percent of all felony cases filed.The numbers of undocumented immigrants in the Maricopa County jails and the Arizona Department of Corrections prisons are also roughly proportional to the population as a whole.

In early March, the Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Policy Center released a study claiming that Mexicans born in Mexico were seven times less likely to be incarcerated than Mexican-Americans.

And aside from their illegal presence, there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants in Arizona commit crimes at a significantly higher rate than any other segment of society.

Last year, the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center polled residents of Phoenix, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Chicago on what they saw as their most serious problems. Only Phoenix identified immigration as its biggest challenge, with nearly half the Phoenix respondents saying they felt that immigrants increase crime rates.

The crime rate is stubbornly high here, Thomas said, pointing out that Arizona leads the nation in auto theft and identity theft. "The vast majority of people who are complaining about immigration are doing so for good-faith reasons."Gascón admitted that many seasoned police officers also believe that Hispanics commit a majority of crimes even if the arrest records don't bear that out.

"I think it has to do with human nature," Gascón said. "You have a new group coming in, and it's threatening to others. It has happened with other groups before and will undoubtedly occur at another time."

Battling perceptions

KFNX-AM (1100) Talk Radio show host Charles Goyette has heard the complaints from callers to his show over the years.

"Anybody that's taken phone calls on the radio about these issues will tell you, here's the archetypal story: 'In the 1990s or the 1980s I was doing my trade in home building and I was a craftsman and I was making $18 an hour. And now I'm happy to make eight.' These are the people who will be most outspoken," he said.

But that may also be a misperception.

The Pew poll indicated that about half of Americans also thought that immigrants were taking jobs - slightly fewer thought so in Phoenix - but the Arizona Chamber of Commerce disputes the notion.

"We are at full employment," said the chamber's Jessica Pacheco. "That means that if you want a job you can get one." But the perceptions and misperceptions linger. "You hear over and over again, people who live in neighborhoods in town that have been stable for 25, 30 years, while they've raised their kids. And now they find they're in deteriorating neighborhoods," Goyette said. Immigration activists tell a different story. "The perception is based on attitudes instead of facts," said Elias Bermudez, president of Immigrants without Borders, an organization that advocates fair immigration reform. Immigrants, he said, are too afraid of being removed from the country if they get arrested.

"Undocumented people, because of the fact that they're undocumented, are less likely to commit a crime, because if they get caught, they're going to end up being deported," Bermudez said.

[peejay 327]

ILLEGAL ALIENS AND CRIME INCIDENCE

Illegal Aliens Represent a Disproportionately High Share of the Prison Population

Introduction

Most Americans equate illegal aliens with a higher incidence of crime. Some academic researchers have attempted to prove that is a misimpression. But, in fact, data show that the American public understands the facts better than the academics.

Adult illegal aliens represented 3.1 percent of the total adult population of the country in 2003. By comparison, the illegal alien prison population represented a bit more than 4.54 percent of the overall prison population. Therefore, deportable criminal aliens were more than half again as likely to be incarcerated as their share of the population.

(For the rest of the article, statistics, and graphs click link below.)

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?page...llegalsandcrime

[Dr_LHA 3]

I read that report, but I'm sorry the numbers are bullshit. They say there are only 2.2 million illegal aliens in California. The number is generally accepted to be 3 million, and possibily even higher. That kind of affects the percentage numbers that they are quoting, doesn't it?

As Benjamin Disraeli famously said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Edited April 8, 2007 by Dr_LHA

[one...two...tree 2,762]

ILLEGAL ALIENS AND CRIME INCIDENCE

Illegal Aliens Represent a Disproportionately High Share of the Prison Population

Introduction

Most Americans equate illegal aliens with a higher incidence of crime. Some academic researchers have attempted to prove that is a misimpression. But, in fact, data show that the American public understands the facts better than the academics.

Adult illegal aliens represented 3.1 percent of the total adult population of the country in 2003. By comparison, the illegal alien prison population represented a bit more than 4.54 percent of the overall prison population. Therefore, deportable criminal aliens were more than half again as likely to be incarcerated as their share of the population.

(For the rest of the article, statistics, and graphs click link below.)

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?page...llegalsandcrime

From the OP:

And the only statistics available that single out the immigration status of defendants and criminals - prison and jail populations, and felonies prosecuted in the county - suggest that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a rate virtually proportionate to their numbers in the general population.

FAIR took the statistics of SCAAP and has drawn some faulty conclusions. Read carefully over their statement. They are an immigration reform group - hardly qualified to give an unbiased report on statistics.

[peejay 327]

I read that report, but I'm sorry the numbers are bullshit. They say there are only 2.2 million illegal aliens in California. The number is generally accepted to be 3 million, and possibily even higher. That kind of affects the percentage numbers that they are quoting, doesn't it?

As Benjamin Disraeli famously said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Gee...that makes me feel so much better to learn they underestimated the number of illegal aliens by roughly a million or more (as if there aren't enough already).

How do you quantify something that is not tracked accurately to begin with? The fact that illegal aliens break into this country illegally in significant numbers and commit a significant amount of crimes is an outrage in itself.

From the OP:

And the only statistics available that single out the immigration status of defendants and criminals - prison and jail populations, and felonies prosecuted in the county - suggest that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a rate virtually proportionate to their numbers in the general population.

FAIR took the statistics of SCAAP and has drawn some faulty conclusions. Read carefully over their statement. They are an immigration reform group - hardly qualified to give an unbiased report on statistics.

Well then...post your indisputable statistics! Since nobody really accurately knows how many illegal aliens there are in the USA, all of these statistics are nothing more than fairy tales.

Whether illegal aliens commit crimes or not is irrelevant to the fact that they are present in our country illegally and do not belong here. The fact that illegal aliens commit a significant amount of crimes in our communities is an outrage in itself.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Illegal immigrants undergo no background check or medical exam to enter the US. Reason enough to deport them.

[JohnK 0]

The fact remains that if they weren't here they wouldn't be committing crimes here. "Oh, they don't commit any more crimes per capita than citizens! So we should let them stay!" Total BS.

[Ban Hammer 13,336]

The fact remains that if they weren't here they wouldn't be committing crimes here. "Oh, they don't commit any more crimes per capita than citizens! So we should let them stay!" Total BS.

that's the enablers speaking. perhaps along with deporting them, we should send an enabler with them

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

The fact remains that if they weren't here they wouldn't be committing crimes here. "Oh, they don't commit any more crimes per capita than citizens! So we should let them stay!" Total BS.

that's the enablers speaking. perhaps along with deporting them, we should send an enabler with them

I find it bizarre that people on a legal immigration site support illegal immigration.

[Ban Hammer 13,336]

The fact remains that if they weren't here they wouldn't be committing crimes here. "Oh, they don't commit any more crimes per capita than citizens! So we should let them stay!" Total BS.

that's the enablers speaking. perhaps along with deporting them, we should send an enabler with them

I find it bizarre that people on a legal immigration site support illegal immigration.

i'm not surprised, ls.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The fact remains that if they weren't here they wouldn't be committing crimes here. "Oh, they don't commit any more crimes per capita than citizens! So we should let them stay!" Total BS.

that's the enablers speaking. perhaps along with deporting them, we should send an enabler with them

I find it bizarre that people on a legal immigration site support illegal immigration.

That's an oversimplification of the varying positions on immigration, just as it is to conclude that illegal immigrants have no respect for our laws, or that they commit more crimes. The issues over immigration are multi-faceted - it doesn't move the issues forward any by polarizing them into those 'against' and those 'for' - forcing a position based on whether you embrace all the rhetoric or reject any of it.

The particular issue in this thread is whether or not crime rates are higher among illegal immigrants. According to the journalists, there are no definitive studies that have been done. So my question to you would be - are you still going to repeat the rhetoric that illegals commit more crimes even if you have no definitive proof?