Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., speaks throughout a information convention on the border on Feb. 15, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Britt delivered the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union speech on Thursday.

Mariam Zuhaib/AP

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Mariam Zuhaib/AP

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., speaks throughout a information convention on the border on Feb. 15, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Britt delivered the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union speech on Thursday.

Mariam Zuhaib/AP

The homicide of Laken Riley took heart stage throughout Thursday evening’s State of The Union. Riley was a 22-year-old pupil who was killed final month on the University of Georgia. The suspect in her homicide is a Venezuelan migrant whom officers say was illegally within the U.S.

During the Republican rebuttal, Riley’s homicide was introduced up by Alabama Sen. Katie Britt. “She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland. Y’all … as a mom, I can’t quit thinking about this. I mean, this could have been my daughter. This could have been yours.”

The declare that immigration brings on a criminal offense wave could be traced again to the primary immigrants who arrived within the U.S. Ever for the reason that Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, this false narrative noticed a resurgence.

During the present presidential marketing campaign, the vitriol has been intense. Just in the previous few months, former president Donald Trump has spoken of immigrants as criminals and mentally unwell people who find themselves “poisoning the blood of our country”. Florida Gov. (and former presidential candidate) Ron DeSantis suggested migrants crossing the border be shot.

However, analysis signifies that immigrants commit much less crimes than U.S.-born folks.

Much of the obtainable knowledge focuses on incarceration charges as a result of that is the place immigration standing is recorded.

Some of essentially the most extensive research comes from Stanford University. Economist Ran Abramitzky discovered that for the reason that Nineteen Sixties, immigrants are 60% much less more likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born folks.

There can also be state degree analysis, that exhibits related outcomes: researchers on the CATO Institute, a Libertarian assume tank, looked into Texas in 2019. They discovered that undocumented immigrants have been 37.1% much less more likely to be convicted of a criminal offense.

Beyond incarceration charges, analysis additionally exhibits that there isn’t any correlation between undocumented folks and an increase in crime. Recent investigations by The New York Times and The Marshall Project discovered that between 2007 and 2016, there was no hyperlink between undocumented immigrants and an increase in violent or property crime in these communities.

The cause for this hole in legal habits might need to do with stability and achievement. The Stanford research concludes that first-generation male immigrants historically do higher than U.S-.born males who did not end highschool, which is the group more than likely to be incarcerated within the U.S.

The research additionally suggests that there is a actual concern of getting in hassle and being deported inside immigrant communities. Far from participating in legal actions, immigrants principally do not wish to rock the boat.

But the concept that immigrants convey crime stays widespread.

Just a few months in the past, NPR reported on a migrant shelter functioning in Staten Island, N.Y. Anthony Pagano, the proprietor of a flower store situated near the shelter, informed NPR he was towards it being situated in his group.

“How do you put migrants across from an elementary school? An all-girl high school, and another public elementary school,” he requested. “You don’t know who they are. Criminals. You see all the crimes that are being committed by migrants.”

New York City Police knowledge exhibits there was no rise in murder, rapes or robberies in the area.