A note on illegal immigration and crime

President Trump in his State of the Union last night, once again, spoke about violent crime committed by undocumented immigrants.  And once again, skeptics afterwards were quick to point out, citing Cato Institute data in at least one instance, that they commit violent crimes at lower overall rates than the rest of the population.

Let’s assume this is true, and I have no evidence to say it isn’t. But comparing broad crime rates between undocumented immigrants and other people in the United States is only one way of grasping the issue.  Also true is that the family members of the people the president introduced presumably would still be alive if they had not been killed, specifically, by undocumented immigrants.  Likewise, many other people in the country who have been assaulted and worse by those here illegally likely would not have been hurt or killed if their victimizers had not, in fact, been here.

Some people, of course, will curse what I’ve just written, calling it bigoted and worse.  It is not.  Rather, it’s an inescapable fact which, while not constituting “blaming the victim,” nevertheless demonstrates too little sympathy for real victims and their pained loved ones.

Or putting matters politically, it is in the best interests of men and women who favor liberalized immigration policies (of whom I’m one) to make it clear they understand this hard reality, as many people of different minds on the issue decidedly do.