Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Tuesday that he will ask citizens to donate money online to finance the border wall he has promised to build.
Abbott announced last Thursday its intention to continue construction of this barrier, which the president, Joe Biden, stopped in February 2021, but did not give details of how it would pay.
This Tuesday he said that he would open an account online to receive money from whoever wants to contribute.
"We don't care": Migrants challenge Texas governor after his announcement to build a wall and arrest those who cross the border without papers
June 11, 202101: 45
"When I make the announcement later this week, I will also provide a link that people can click and access, for everyone in the United States (really the whole world) who wants to help Texas build the border wall. , there will be a place there where you can contribute, "Abbott said in a podcast on Republican politics called Ruthless.
Abbott repeated false accusations against immigrants, as increasing crime, although the data shows this to be false.
The announcement was first reported by The Texas Tribune newspaper.
"The Biden Administration just doesn't care, so someone has to defend these people, and that someone is the Governor of Texas," Abbott said on the podcast.
The falsehoods that Abbott promotes may sound familiar to many immigrants, especially Mexicans, since former President Donald Trump began his career in the White House claiming that this country sent people who brought with them "problems" and crime.
However, numerous studies show the opposite.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2021 in Austin, Texas.Montinique Monroe / Getty Images
The Cato Institute, which conducts independent, nonpartisan public policy research, has repeatedly analyzed data on those who enter the Texas criminal justice system (the only state that maintains records of the immigration status of those arrested)
In its most recent study, published in November, it concluded that, in 2018, the criminal conviction rate for undocumented immigrants was 782 per 100,000.
By comparison, the rate among people born in the United States was 1,422 per 100,000.
That means that
undocumented immigrants are 45% less likely to be convicted of a crime
, including violent crimes, property crimes, homicides and sex crimes.
For legal immigrants, the rate is 535 per 100,000, even lower.
Between 1990 and 2013, as the number of undocumented immigrants in the country rose from 3.5 million to 11.2 million,
the violent crime rate fell 48%,
including fewer armed robberies, robberies, rapes and murders, according to FBI data cited in a study by the American Immigration Council published in 2015
Multiple academic studies have also shown that
there is no relationship between immigration and crime.
One of them, published in September 2019 by Christian Gunadi, an economist at the University of California, Riverside, found that
the undocumented are 33 times less likely to end up in prison than Native Americans
.
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Trump had promised, on the campaign trail and already in office, that he would build 1,000 miles of border wall along the entire border, including Texas.
As of January 4, 2021,
452 miles of the border wall
had been completed, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
However, only 80 miles belonged to new barriers, while the rest only replaced or reinforced existing structures.
The cost of that wall, which ended up being built with metal fences between 18 and 30 feet high, was about $ 15 billion.
Mexico did not pay for it, as Trump had promised in the campaign, but several US agencies such as the Defense Department, with money from taxpayers.
