Putatively prompted by the revelation (not news to anyone who paid attention in 2002) that the real murderer of the unfortunate Chandra Levy was not the hapless Representative Gary Condit of California, but most likely a Salvadoran illegal alien named Ingmar Guandique (did his parents admire Swedish movies?) who made a habit of preying on American women in Washington's Rock Creek Park, the title of S-M's column is "Do Immigrants Really Cause Crime To Rise?" Then, relying heavily on data cooked up by the American (sic) Immigration Law Foundation and the Pew Hispanic Center, S-M purports to find that immigrants to the United States are less crime-prone than native Americans. S-M's presentation grossly understates the effect of immigration on crime in America, because he and his sources carefully do not distinguish children of illegal aliens and immigrants from children of natives in their breakouts of the percentages of inmates in California who are foreign-born and U.S.-born. To pretend that a Mexican or Salvadoran anchor-baby gang-banger in San Quentin is not part of an immigration-driven negative phenomenon is ludicrous—but passes unchallenged almost everywhere except VDare.com.
Still, all the data-slicing S-M and his open-borders sources indulge in misses the point entirely. The answer to the question in his title is obvious. If a foreign national enters the United States, whether as a legal immigrant or an illegal alien, and commits crimes in America, that immigrant has increased crime in America. To paraphrase the evil Joseph Stalin: no immigrant, no crime. If that foreign national had not been here, America would have been free of his crimes. Even if it were true that native Americans commit crimes at overall higher rates than foreign nationals in America and their progeny—which I do not for a moment believe—that is no argument for admitting immigrants with any propensity to crime. Wouldn't it be better to keep the foreign criminals out, the better to deal with our home-grown thugs? S-M and his friends may find it terribly offensive that Americans associate certain immigrant groups with high levels of crime, but it is a perception that has been reinforced by every wave of immigration to our shores. And since S-M and friends concentrate on violent crimes, they miss the full impact of immigrant criminality at all levels of American society. As a timely example, I would invite them to ponder the case of Barack Hussein and Michelle Obama's very close friend, Syrian native Antoin "Tony" Rezko .
