The IPC's Misleading Take on Crime, Arizona and Immigration

by Jack Martin, FAIR Special Projects Director

Last week the Immigration Policy Center, an organization that is the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council - a mass immigration and amnesty advocacy organization - issued a short paper asserting that "Arizona's punishment doesn't fit the crime." The IPC's argument was that the assertion that one of the purposes for the adoption of SB 1070 was to lower the crime rate does not make sense because the crime rate in the state has already been dropping without a new law. (continued in full entry)

The IPC argument was based on FBI crime data and correctly showed a decline in both the violent crime rate per capita and in the property crime rate per capita in Arizona. What the IPC report neglected to point out to its readers is that the crime rate in Arizona has been at or near the top of the FBI's national crime index every year since 2000. Furthermore, the FBI does not have a category in the crime data it collects for kidnappings - which are higher per capita in Arizona than anywhere in the United States and just about anywhere in the world. The IPC report dismisses the issue of kidnappings as mostly related to drug smugglers and human smugglers. That apparently is supposed to mean that if Mexican smugglers are committing crimes in Arizona, it's nothing to worry about as long a most of the victims are Mexicans.

The IPC also has consulted its crystal ball and states, "...the undermining of trust between police and the community is precisely what Arizona's new law accomplishes." The report's authors were not deterred by the fact that the new law isn't even in force yet to describe the effect of it. Perhaps IPC and the Council are confident about the results of the law because they are committed to creating an environment of distrust between the immigrant population in Arizona and the police. Presumably they understand that the objective of the new law is not the harassment of immigrants, but rather the identification of aliens illegally in the country. Presumably they know - but choose to ignore - that foreigners legally in the country are given documentation by the federal government that establishes their legal presence.

Finally, the IPC report asserts that "...immigrants are less [emphasis in the original] likely to commit crimes or be behind bars than the native-born." This claim is a standard bait and switch tactic. Moving from the illegal alien population to immigrants changes the population being analyzed dramatically. Immigrants are screened to keep out anyone with a criminal past - unlike illegal aliens who have sneaked into the country. It should also be noted that illegal aliens who commit crimes, if caught, are usually deported rather than being released back into the population. So the number of illegal aliens committing crimes should be reduced more for than native-born criminals who are released back into the population and may become recidivists.

The report ignores other objective data that document that Arizona has a disproportionate problem with foreign-born criminals. That may be seen in data from the federal government's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. Funds are distributed proportionate to the size of the deportable alien population held in state and local detention facilities. The state, which has 2.15 percent of the U.S. population, received 4.88 percent of the SCAAP funds in 2009 (add the county/city total to the state line item in the PDF). In other words, Arizona has more than double its share of alien criminals.