Why President Trump is Wrong to Claim the Wall will Reduce Crime
In a tweet yesterday, President Trump unveiled a new slogan to back his demand that Congress approve $5.7 billion for an expanded border barrier: “BUILD A WALL & CRIME WILL FALL!” As he has stated many times in the past, the president claims that immigrants crossing the border illegally are unleashing a wave of crime in the United States, and the only way to stop it is to build his big wall along the Southwest border.
President Trump’s alleged link between levels of immigration and crime has never been supported by the facts. Study after study has shown that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are less likely to commit crimes and be incarcerated in the United States than native-born Americans. A comprehensive 2015 study on immigration by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that,
Far from immigration increasing crime rates, studies demonstrate that immigrants and immigration are associated inversely with crime. Immigrants are less likely than the native-born to commit crimes, and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have much lower rates of crime and violence than comparable non-immigrant neighborhoods.
In a study of crime statistics in the state of Texas, my esteemed counterpart at the Cato Institute, Alex Nowrasteh, found that the conviction rate for serious crimes was significantly lower in 2015 for both legal and illegal immigrants compared to native-born residents of the state. Specifically, Nowrasteh found:
There were 785 total homicide convictions in Texas in 2015. Of those, native-born Americans were convicted of 709 homicides, illegal immigrants were convicted of 46 homicides, and legal immigrants were convicted of 30 homicides. The homicide conviction rate for native-born Americans was 3.1 per 100,000, 2.6 per 100,000 for illegal immigrants, and 1 per 100,000 for legal immigrants. In 2015, homicide conviction rates for illegal and legal immigrants were 16 percent and 67 percent below those of natives, respectively.
More broadly, nationwide trends in the past three decades simply do not support President Trump’s argument. Since 1990, the illegal immigrant population of the United States has more than tripled, while the rate of violent crime has fallen almost by half. The reasons behind the fall in crime are complex and most of them have nothing to do with immigration, but the broad trends are at least consistent with the findings noted above, and they are at least on their face inconsistent with President Trump’s claim that reducing illegal immigration will cause the U.S. violent crime rate to fall.
It borders on demagoguery to attempt to frighten the American people into supporting a wall by claiming that it will stop a wave of crime committed by illegal immigrants. There is no wave. Building a wall will not mean that the crime rate in America will fall. If the crime rate does continue to fall, it will almost certainly be because of the same factors that have led to its steady and welcome decline in the past three decades, not because of any additional barriers built on the Southwest border.
If the president and Congress decide to throw billions of dollars toward a wall, it should be done for the right reasons — not because of false claims about illegal immigration and crime.
[This is an updated version of an article that was posted on January 23, 2019.]
