The open borders crowd is on a mission to shove immigrants (legal or not) down our throats. With sensational murders like that of Laken Riley, they seek to get in front of the problem and claim that immigrants have lower crime rates than native born Americans [Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans, studies find,by Jasmin Garsd, NPR, March 22, 2024]. I should hope so. If you are in a foreign country, afraid of being deported, I would think that you would be on your best behavior. Ann Coulter recently had an article about “The Myth of Low Immigrant Crime”. Apparently, much of the “studies” about immigrants having a low crime rate are all studies done by one Alex Nowrasteh [Tweet him] of the open borders libertarian Cato Institute (I thought Cato was Inspector Clouseau’s Chinese manservant. Seems appropriate for a joke of a thinktank).
Also, with Joe Biden’s SOTU speech in which he engaged in “whataboutism” trying to diminish Laken Riley’s murder by an illegal alien by saying "How many of the thousands of people are being killed by legals?”. It’s typical liberal where a murder happens and they say, “Well, there are plenty of Americans who commit murder too.” The thing is that we have to deal with our fellow citizens which is bad enough, now, we have to import murderers too?
Anyway, as far as those legally here committing crime, I tried finding the statistics on how many green cards get revoked because of immigrants committing crime. From my past, I can remember one Iraqi who had his LAPR status revoked (Lawfully Approved for Permanent Residency aka Green Card) because of a conviction for distributing cocaine. Yet, he wasn’t deported because he claimed he would be killed if he was sent back to Iraq. (Gee, maybe you shouldn’t have broken the law here then. Did you think of that?)
In 2018, 26% of federal prisoners were aliens, according to the Center For Immigration Studies. That doesn’t count all the aliens imprisoned at the state and local level. Here’s a breakdown of which countries they come from, courtesy of the Federal Bureau Of Prisons.
However, I don’t think this paints the full picture. I can remember talking to a Turkish guy many years ago. He was a graduate student, and he was telling me that several of his fellow Turkish students here in the United States were taking out credit cards are racking up tremendous bills because upon graduation, they intended to leave the United States and never come back.
I once briefly served on a Border Enforcement Security Team (BEST) where ICE investigated all kinds of crimes, mainly drug importation. As you can imagine, just about every single narcotics violation had an immigrant connection. We don’t grow cocaine here after all.
In my experience arresting run of the mill illegal aliens, a great many had prior arrests, but no convictions. They would get charged with DUIs, marijuana possession, assault (either domestic or a drunken fight with amigos), trespassing etc.… Low level crimes in general, and rather than stick around for trial, they simply moved to a different state. Most jurisdictions will not bother to extradite for low level crimes, so, they never showed a conviction. This posed a problem for us when Obama came into office, because his administration said that illegal aliens who had committed no crime were not a priority for deportation. So, an illegal alien who had been arrested for DUI three times, but showed no convictions would often get walked out the door.
Another time, one of my friends was investigating Romanians coming to the United States to pull off scams. They would get on eBay, advertise a high end luxury Mercedes for sale. When someone bit on their offer, they would have the unsuspecting American wire them $500 to show their good faith. After doing this at an address in one state, they would quickly change states and do the same thing in another state. They were sending back to Romania over a million dollars pulling this scam. They would rotate out players in this fraud back and forth from Romania. They had no ties to America after all.
I also remember years back hearing about Colombian shoplifting rings operating in the United States. If any of them got caught here in the U.S., they would post bond and flee back to Colombia to be replaced by another Colombian.
Here are some recent headlines about foreigners committing scams in the U.S.
South American gangs targeting upscale residences with Chileans, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, and Colombians all operating as one big happy family.
This is an old one—referenced because easy to find only because KTLA put “Gypsy Family in the headline—involving Roma Gypsies, but, in my experience, Roma Gypsies are involved in a lot of crime. If caught, many of them would post bond, flee back to Romania, obtain a new ID there, then go to Canada and sneak back across the border into America.
Here’s another theft ring that was operating in Baltimore County originating in Chile. It looks like the majority of the culprits were visa overstays (came in legally on a visa, but didn’t leave when the terms of the visa expired).
Here’s one shoplifting ring headed by one Roni Rubinov, “Queensman”. They seem to ignore his immigration status, but here’s the list of those indicted along with him and you tell me if you think there’s an immigration angle to this.
Here are the first 15 names
Here’s a recent one involving “retail theft” (shoplifting) involving poor oppressed immigrants.
Here’s an overview of South American and Eastern Europeans coming to America to “steal and then ship goods internationally.”
If prices are up at your local store, it’s not just because of government spending. Immigrant crime plays a significant role.
I remember a professor in college telling us about a study involving two poor communities, one with a high crime rate, the other with a low one. The researchers found that the big difference between the two communities was transiency. In the high crime neighborhood, there were a lot of renters who were constantly moving in and out. In the low crime neighborhood, residents had lived there for generations and almost all knew each other. In this latter neighborhood, they looked out for each other and knew who belonged to which house. In the other neighborhood, people didn’t want to get involved in other people’s business and they didn’t know each other.
As we let in thousands of people with little to no ties to the United States, they will happily move about the country committing crimes and hopping to a new jurisdiction, or, simply return to their home countries.
P.S. Our government tries to hide immigrant crime. It’s difficult to find out statistics on things like how many Green Cards are revoked due to criminal convictions. I can remember touring one of the Federal Detention Facilities. There were literally thousands of immigrants there waiting to see if they would be deported. They had a law library for doing research.
In my anecdotal experience, a lot of immigrants feel no loyalty to the U.S., but just look on us as a land to be plundered.
