contrary to what the minutemen & lou dobbs might have you believe, from the front page of the az daily star this morning: Study: Immigrants don't raise U.S. crime rate.
WASHINGTON — Immigrants — both legal and illegal — do not raise the rate of crime in the United States, according to a study released Monday.
In every ethnic group, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are less educated, said the study by the Immigration Policy Center, an immigrant-advocacy group in Washington. This holds especially true for Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans, who make up the bulk of the illegal population.
surprised? i'm not. i work construction in tucson & my experience is; the guys who speak no english on job sites - & i have no idea which are legal - work their butts off & try to keep a low profile. they try to, as tony montana said, "fly straight."
now i realize, that the anti immigrant folks will say, "as soon as they cross the border without papers, they are in fact criminals that haven't been caught." but what this study show, i think, is that the vast majority of immigrants come here to work & not to commit crimes - that they come to build & harvest, not to pillage.
"The misperception that immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, are responsible for higher crime rates is deeply rooted in American public opinion and is sustained by media anecdotes and popular myth," said Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California-Irvine. "This perception is not supported empirically. In fact, it is refuted by the preponderance of scientific evidence."
immigrants, legal & illegal are not the devil, in fact, they are bringing the national crime rate down.