A priori, it seems reasonable to believe that immigrants are less likely to engage in crimes (other than "immigration crimes" of course, though most immigration "crimes" are "civil crimes") because it increases the risk they would get caught and deported. OTOH, some seem to believe that illegals are more likely to engage in violent crime because (1) they already broke the law/rules of immigration, and (2) they are darker skinned people (etc). Some of that perception seems to come from racism and bigotry.
That legal immigrants commit less crime than citizens is rarely disputed by those examining the data. The only question is with illegal immigrants.
CATO has written many articles claiming that illegal immigrants commit less violent crime based on actual data from Texas. (I'll link one below.)
Now, you may dismiss CATO as a hack right wing organization with an "open borders" agenda because that suits their corporate sponsors who want cheaper labor. And quite often, I do dismiss CATO's conclusions, and many of their comments even in these articles. But I believe they are presenting the actual crime data here, and their articles on crime are widely quoted in the mainstream news media. MAGA who are even aware of CATO say they have "gone communist." That is not what actual Communists think.
It's not surprising mainstream media quotes the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) much less, because that's a lefty union related organization worried about worker conditions, but they reach the same conclusions as CATO on crime rates.
The people like CIS and others I have seen who claim to debunk CATO on immigration have just as much of an agenda, as you can often glean by looking at their other articles. In 2024, CIS claimed to debunk a popular 2022 CATO study used by many media outlets.
https://cis.org/Richwine/Catos-Brazenly-False-Claim-About-Our-Illegal-Immigrant-Crime-Research
I can't seem to find any CATO study from 2022, but they published them almost every other year it seems, including 2018, 2024, and 2026:
2018
2024
It might be interesting to look back at the CIS original research itself, rather than just their "debunkings" of CATO Their original research looks as hacky, if not more, that that from CATO.
https://cis.org/Report/Misuse-Texas-Data-Understates-Illegal-Immigrant-Criminality
While CIS isclaiming CATO is fudging the numbers, guess what CIS is doing. Fudging the numbers. They are claiming illegal immigrant status is undercounted, but claim to have come up with a trick to handle it...the time required for greater convictions means a higher rate of correct identification in the most serious crimes.
https://cis.org/Report/Misuse-Texas-Data-Understates-Illegal-Immigrant-Criminalit
Which brings to my mind a problem with this whole category of studies. What people are really interested in is not the rate of "convictions." They are interested in the actual rate of crimes. Now I believe it's virtually certain that illegal aliens have a higher convinction rate among those who actually did the crime. They are much more likely to get caught because of racial bias and exposure, and more likely to get convicted because of lack of connections and representation compared with citizens, including being more likely to get falsely convicted.
Everyone knows by now most crimes are not even investigated, much less solved. What happens is that people get caught in the "justice" system somehow, such as with an immigration violation, and then their prints and gun numbers can be run through the system. Crimes without that kind of exposure never get solved.
Then of course well connected people can often get off, that too. That would certainly affect the most serious crime convictions. Everyone knows a good lawyer can get you off, but not so much a public defender.
All things considered, I believe the excess-conviction-rate-relative-to-citizens (ECRRC) is many times higher than 1, such as 3-20, dwarfing all the concerns of CIS and others (and, in fact, enabling their narrative)...
But then CIS numbers for the illegals in the most serious violent crimes also differ from everyone elses, including CATO and the NAS below. So that's worthy of checking too. It could be cherry picking somehow.
Possibly the most authoritative source we can have in USA is the National Academy of Sciences, which includes the most highly rated scientists in the USA, and all of their reports are peer reviewed. And I can tell you because I've been in science that the NAS is politically diverse, it's not just "libruls." Even academic science relies on scientific entrepreneurs who become Principal Investigators, they make a lot of money, and tend to be conservative, just like medical doctors. And it's those "top" people who tend to get into NAS. It's not just one party involved with appointing the people who appoint the funders of science either, and that determines who become the top Principal Investigators and who fall into other roles.
The NAS weighed in with a paper in 2020 showing that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117
Now, of course, they used a "model" to determine the number of illegals in any of the crime categories because of the incomplete identification problem described by CIS. A model that was peer reviewed and available to public (as is the PDF of the original paper here).
That's the standard scientific approach, and they haven't seen fit to update that research. I note that it was published during the first Trump administration, and scientists are well aware of such things.
That seems to be that's the best we know right now.
And the most respected mainstream media outlets like the NYTimes and WashingtonPost and all such follow it, with exceptions exceptions (perhaps quoting CIS) for FoxNews and the like.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/29/truth-about-illegal-immigration-crime/
They link to CATO, CIS, and NAS.
Still, it's a measure of convictions, not actual crimes, which I think are far more undercounted for the citizens.
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