Opinions: Wrongfully accused

 published on Tuesday, February 26, 2008

All illegal immigrants are criminals.

Well, at least by virtue of the term "illegal" immigrants, they are criminals — just like how football is played exclusively with the foot and just like how coconut milk is truly milk.

Just by virtue of crossing illegally into our country, they are illegal. If a law is violated, the person who does it is a criminal (at least once this person is properly tried in a court and found guilty of immigration violations). No use in arguing that.

However, when talking illegal immigration, there is a habit among the illegal-immigration crowd to pin most every crime on an immigrant. Many crime stories duly mention that the alleged perpetrator was undocumented. It's become common knowledge that most crimes in our fair state are committed by those dastardly illegals.

Too bad the facts don't back it up.

An article in Monday's Arizona Republic disproved the commonly held public notion that immigrant crime rates are substantially higher than those of other population blocks.

According to the article, a D.C.-area think tank estimated in November that 579,000 illegal immigrants reside in Arizona, making up about 9 percent of the population. And, at the end of 2007, 7,700 out of 76,000 people booked into Maricopa County jails, or just more than 10 percent, were subject to Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds.

What this suggests is that illegal immigrants are not charged with any more crimes than the rest of us. Or, in other words, you should be just as worried about your Stars and Stripes-waving, natural-born neighbor as you are of your undocumented neighbor.

Yet, far be it for facts to trump our own convictions: We know illegal immigrants sneak over the border just to commit heinous crimes, right? We just know it. And we aren't going to let facts stand in our way.

This mentality has already been adopted by our own Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, the ultimate denier of facts when they are not politically befitting.

Thomas, who has previously linked illegal immigrants and the Valley's crime rate as "directly related," stuck to his guns when these factual numbers came out refuting this stance, saying to the Republic, "The link between crime and illegal immigration is well known and was recognized by the 78 percent of Arizonans who voted for Proposition 100 in 2006."

Cool, Mr. Thomas … very cool. Apparently public opinion is a far greater measurement of reality than statistics. Pretty soon we won't need to look outside to see if it's raining; we'll just do a survey.

Illegal immigration is an issue that needs to be addressed, but when it comes to the view that immigrants are rampant crime perpetrators, this is simply pinning down a scapegoat for society's ills. Sure there are bad illegal immigrants, but there are bad people in all segments of society.

Yet the public outrage and political voices wouldn't lead you to think so. Because, as our daily e-mail inbox suggests, this is an overly heated, politicized issue with a majority landing on Thomas' tough-on-immigration side.

However, if you're still looking for a scapegoat, especially for all of our crime woes, there are other places to look than just 10 percent of those jailed; namely at the other 90 percent.