Immigration does not increase crime in the United States, as the Texas Government falsely points out

The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, announced on Wednesday a plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and again linked immigration and crime as former President Donald Trump used to.

Abbott said that he will try to pay for the wall with donations and assured that his intention is to comply with the Texans who "have asked him for protection."

"I told them that Texas would step up and respond. Today we began that response," he said. 

[Texas will ask for donations online so that "everyone in the US and the whole world" will pay for the border wall promised by its governor]

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick was even tougher, suggesting that the future of undocumented youth coming to America is crime. 

"What do you do with a 14-year-old boy from Central America, who doesn't speak English, who is three [school] grades behind? What does he do when he comes to the United States? They just let him go free. You can't put a child in 14-year-old in a fifth grade class. What's his future? Crime, low pay, no future? "Patrick said. 

"What is the reality of the people who are coming? The criminals that are filling MS-13 and other gangs in the state and across the country, making them more powerful. The drugs that are coming. This is a fight for our survival. "added the lieutenant governor, who made himself known in part as a conservative radio commentator. 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (right) and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (left) in a file photo during a press conference in September 2020. Both announced on June 16, 2021 that they will attempt to build a wall with Mexico.Eric Gay / AP

What Patrick says is false.

There is no evidence that young people who enter the United States undocumented end up committing crimes

.

Nor has any relationship been demonstrated between immigration in general and crime. 

Quite the opposite.

Several studies cited by the Pew Research Center show that the crime rate among first-generation immigrants, that is, those born in another country, is "significantly lower" than the overall crime rate for people born in the United States, and second generation immigrants (born here to foreign parents). 

[10 Big Lies Donald Trump Told About Immigration During His Presidency]

"It is even lower for teens and those in their early 20s, the age range in which criminal involvement peaks," notes the Pew Research Center.

There is no relationship between crime and immigration

Numerous investigations indicate that, as immigration increases, crime decreases nationally.

Between 1990 and 2013, as the number of undocumented immigrants 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 from the American Immigration Council published in 2015.

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Research published in 2018 by Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, concluded that irregular immigration did not increase crime;

instead it is linked to a slight reduction in the violent crime rate.

According to the study, a 1% increase in the proportion of the undocumented population is associated with 49 fewer violent crimes per 100,000 people.

Another study, conducted by the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan research center based in Washington, DC, looked at data from those who enter the criminal justice system in Texas, the state governed by Abbott and Patrick.

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.

["I never lied," says a former Trump spokeswoman.

But the evidence proves otherwise]

Several 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 undocumented immigrants are 33 times less likely to go to prison than native Americans.

In 2019, an analysis of data from The New York Times and the research website The Marshall Project also concluded that there is no evidence of any connection between undocumented immigrants and crime.

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In July of that year, researchers from the University of California, Davis, studied crime data from more than 1,000 localities in the United States that adopted the Secure Communities program, a collaborative plan between local police and the Immigration and Control Service. ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants, which began in 2008 and was removed by the Barack Obama Administration in 2014. 

The study found that

communities with more deportations did not experience lower crime rates than those with fewer deportations

. It determined that deportations do not increase police efficiency in the resolution of criminal cases, nor do they provide more police resources to communities. In addition, higher rates of deportation "do not attract business or increase job opportunities for low-skilled workers" in those towns, as former President Trump claimed when he revived the program in 2017.