Crime myths

A new report from the Immigration Policy Center in Washington, D.C., suggests that the widely held belief that immigrants are part of some vast crime wave is a myth.

From the report: "Even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent."

And: "Among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was 5 times higher than the 0.7 percent incarceration rate of the foreign-born."

And: "The problem of crime in the United States is not "caused" or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. But the misperception that the opposite is true persists among policymakers, the media, and the general public, thereby undermining the development of reasoned public responses to both crime and immigration."

If we were all immigrants, perhaps our expensive state prisons wouldn't be bursting at the seams.