The percentage of immigrants committing crimes is lower than that of U.S. citizens, according to two studies this week.
"Legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives," the Cato Institute Study concluded.
Cato's study was produced to "provide numbers and demographic characteristics to better inform the public policy debate over immigration and crime."
The Sentencing Project also released a report of its own study, which found "immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens."
"Foreign-born residents of the United States commit crime less often than native-born citizens," The Sentencing Project summarized. "Policies that further restrict immigration are therefore not effective crime-control strategies. These facts — supported by over 100 years of research – have been misrepresented both historically and in recent political debates."
It also made these four conclusions from its research, the last of which corroborates the Cato Institute's findings:
1. "Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens."
2. "Higher levels of immigration in recent decades may have contributed to the historic drop in crime rates."
3. "Police chiefs believe that intensifying immigration law enforcement undermines public safety."
4. "Immigrants are under-represented in U.S. prisons."
"Illegal immigrants are 44 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives," Cato wrote.
"Legal immigrants are 69 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives. Legal and illegal immigrants are underrepresented in the incarcerated population while natives are overrepresented.
"If native-born Americans were incarcerated at the same rate as illegal immigrants, about 893,000 fewer natives would be incarcerated. If natives were incarcerated at the same rate as legal immigrants, about 1.4 million fewer natives would be incarcerated."
Democrats opposing President Donald Trump's budget and immigration orders are sure to use this information in their arguments.
"There's always the horrible, fallacious view that you have to go after immigrants and then you point out a few immigrants that have committed horrible crimes," Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., told The Hill.
"You could do the same with mothers. I remember quite well a mother taking her children and driving them into a lake, and they all drowned. You wouldn't make the argument then that mothers are bad and we have to go after mothers because mothers are criminal."
Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., suggested Republicans are going to regret their legislative moves in the next election cycle.
"It's a rush to deal with a campaign issue that I think Republicans in general and the Trump administration specifically feel that an anti-immigrant strategy is going to be something that will serve them well in the next round of elections," Grijalva told The Hill. "I don't think so, I think it's going to catch up with them."
Rep. Mario Diaz Balart, R-Fla., said the Trump focus is on "emphasizing border security" to fix a "porous" border that has been trending in the wrong direction during President Barack Obama's two terms in the White House.
"This president is emphasizing border security, the last president deported more people than anybody in history: Both of those approaches I think don't deal with a big part of what is broken which is a legal system that is just dysfunctional," Balart told The Hill.
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