Just in time for uneasy holiday dinners, some prominent politicians are claiming that the only way to keep America safe is expelling undocumented immigrants and forbidding Muslim refugees. This is a dangerous lie.
Saying that America’s racial tensions are bad right now is a bit like saying that this season of The Apprentice sucks — it’s redundant. For the record, the only good season of Apprentice was the one with Penn Jillette, and the only era of American history without racial tension was never.
Around 700,000 people immigrate to America illegally every year. To many, this is an alarming number. Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign by bemoaning this phenomenon, calling out Mexican immigrants in particular as violent criminals.
“They’re sending people with lots of problems,” said Trump. “And they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”
Trump’s racially charged, anti-immigrant pandering worked. At press time, Reuters reports Trump as well ahead of the rest of his Republican competitors, with a 15-point lead.
While this story of illegal immigrants as bringers of dismay plays well to certain voters, it is only a story. Actually, undocumented workers seem to make America safer.
Tracking crime statistics of undocumented people is difficult. That is sort of the idea, after all: staying out of the way and keeping a low profile.
Here’s what we do know.
From 1990 to 2013, America’s undocumented immigrant population swelled from 3.5 to 11.2 million. During that time, the national violent crime rate fell by nearly half.
Foreign-born Americans are also half as likely to wind up in prison as native-born Americans. Either undocumented folks have invisibility cloaks, or they really don’t commit as many crimes as the rest of us.
Noting this trend, some cities have stopped pursuing undocumented workers altogether.
So-called “sanctuary cities” were the talk of newsrooms nationwide a while back for their peculiar stance, but the fact is that prosecuting illegal immigration is not a city or state responsibility. These are simply not concerns for overburdened local police forces.
In fact, cities often enacted this policy at the behest of law enforcement. Police are meant to serve their community. Cops in areas with a high immigrant population have sometimes found that being tasked with searching and detaining potential illegal immigrants damaged their relationship with the community so badly that it was hard to do their job.
No matter what naysayers will tell you, sanctuary cities are safer than cities of comparable size. Yet politicians continue to spread their childish myths of immigrant violence.
That myth is partially responsible for American’s embarrassing reaction to the Paris attacks. On Nov. 13, the French capital was struck by radical Islamic terrorists affiliated with ISIL. On Nov. 19, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to suspend the Syrian refugee program with a bill that would add absurd steps to the refugee screening process.
None of the Paris attackers were Syrian refugees, but that doesn’t really matter. Measures like this are meant to make us feel safer, even if they don’t actually work.
Terror cells are extremely unlikely to send jihadists through the Syrian refugee program.
It’s an 18-24 month ordeal with no guarantee of entry. Refugees are historically the most background-checked entrants into our country, and Congress is looking to make it even harder for them to get in. Terrorists opting for this method would be giving American intelligence agencies two whole years to trace them back to their group. Maybe the House is afraid of jihadis who are just starting Game of Thrones.
It isn’t just national politicians telling the fearful tall tale about immigrants. Thirty governors have spoken against admitting Syrian refugees, and some have pledged that they would not let them in. The gesture is meaningless — states have no jurisdiction over admitting refugees and cannot prevent them from moving across state lines. This is a transparent political ploy and nothing more.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder jumped on the bandwagon. Snyder suspended his Syrian refugee program after the Paris attacks, an embarrassingly reactionary reversal of his pro-immigration, pro-refugee policy. The Great Lake State is better than that.
Refusing Syrian refugees only plays into ISIL’s hand. We tend to lump all Muslims together, but we cannot forget that Syrians of every faith suffer terror attacks from ISIL constantly. Fear is ISIL’s only tactic — any strategy to stop them must begin with a courageous vow to shield their victims.
I don’t want to name names, but I know a few white people. Don’t tell them, but this century, white people have committed more acts of terror than our 785,000 refugees (who have committed zero acts of terror). In fact, white supremacist terrorists have killed twice as many people as Islamic terrorists have in America since 9/11.
America needs to grow up in its immigration politics.
Imagine what would happen if our next president tried to round America’s entire undocumented population. This crusade would require, at minimum, a massive, invasive operation by the National Guard and law enforcement agencies countrywide. In many cities, the destruction of police/community relations would be absolute. I pity any police forced to function after such a travesty.
Crime and terrorism cannot be stopped by paranoia. Let’s do the strong, brave, smart thing — treat immigrants and refugees like human beings.