No, We Have No Idea What the Migrant Crime Rate Is
5th August 2024
If you’ve been following the headlines, particularly coming out of America’s larger cities, it’s been impossible to miss all of the stories about crimes involving illegal migrants in some fashion. In New York, for example, there have been at least eight gun-related murders so far this year where either the shooter, the victim, or both were migrants. Mostly we hear about the most horrifying crimes involving violent attacks, rapes, and abuse involving migrants, but many incidents of property crimes and lower-level assaults take place as well. But are actual crime rates higher among the illegal migrants or is this all hyperbole cooked up by the “right-wing media” during an election season, as some leftist commentators have suggested? The problem, as pointed out by Nicole Gelinas in an op-ed at the NY Post this week, is that we simply don’t know. We aren’t getting the sort of data we would require to draw any firm conclusions.