(NOTE—This material originally was posted for August 1, the day before the primary election. It was posted in unreadable form so we are re-posting it today. Although the entry refers to candidates in the primary election, the issues remain for the general election so we are re-posting the entry to discuss those issues because they remain valid for the primary survivors who will make them issues in their new campaigns.)
One would think, to view some Missouri candidates’ commercials that our state is being overrun by fentanyl-fueled escaped mental patients, prison escapees, murderers, rapists, robbers—-and probably some shoplifters and car thieves just to be inclusive—from south of the border. .
Several of these candidates for statewide office have promised to “fix” the illegal immigrant problem (aka “unregistered immigrant” problem), a national issue that has been made only worse by a couple of governors who have “fixed” their problems by shipping immigrants—legally here or not—to other states. The Missouri candidates have not told us how they are going to solve a national problem.
There have been promises of mobilizing all of the law enforcement agencies in the state and even calling out the National Guard to end this overwhelming threat, which sounds like a good time to achieve your dream of driving 150 mph on I-70 because there sure won’t be any deputies or troopers left to catch you because they are out hauling in people generally of Central American origin.
One candidate has stated he personally will drive the buses stuffed with these folks back to the border—to Texas, which has one of the governors shipping immigrants to other states. He could call it “Operation Return to Sender.”
That’s great public policy—getting into an immigrant-shipping war with another state.
Sheesh! What a bunch of nonsense all of this is.
But a lot of our candidates for statewide office have spent campaign funds to go to Texas so they can produce a commercial showing them bravely standing in front of the Great Wall of Trump and most sincerely telling us they will solve the illegal immigrant problem. The whole darned thing.
And there’s a point they hope voters won’t think about—that Biden’s “failed immigration policies” are to a significant degree the failure of the GWOT to do the job our former president promised it would do. Perhaps his “beautiful wall” hasn’t saved us after all.
And by the way, in the eight years since he told us the GWOT would stop the flow of these dangerous men, women, and children—and Mexico would pay for it—we’re still waiting to see the first check signed by the President of our southern neighbor.
If the GWOT was working as well as its advocates said back in 2016 that it would, we wouldn’t have these problems and our candidates could be focused instead on what they will do with the REAL problems Missourians face, including—
—a chronically unfunded mental health system
—domestic homelessness (I haven’t seen any immigrants, legal or illegal, on the streets of Missouri’s Capital City.)
—underfunded payments to nursing homes
—Loss of Medicaid coverage for thousands of Missouri’s children and delays in providing medical care for them.
—Straightening out the state’s troubled foster care program
—Continued weak state compensation to counties for housing state prisoners
—Uncertain future for road and bridge funding
—weak support for veterans hospitals
—-advisability of state funding for stadiums in KC and St. Louis.
—-inadequate health and reproductive care for women (The privately-funded Commonwealth Fund, which focuses on health care issues, recently ranked Missouri 40th out of 51 states and DC in this category.)
We could go on and on but the only thing the candidates seem to want to go on and on about is the immigrant problem. You’d think we’re being overrun by illegal immigrants from south of the border—all of whom, to hear the candidates tell it, are threats to our society and our safety.
They are quite willing to play fast and loose with the facts when they blame unregistered immigrants for high crime problems.
The Brennan Center, founded at the New York University School of law by former clerks of Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr., reported in late May:
In the past few months, politicians and certain media outlets have latched on to a narrative that recent immigrants, especially undocumented ones, are causing spikes in crime. Instead of gathering data and examining the issue empirically, they are making this broad assertion based on highly publicized individual incidents of crime by undocumented immigrants. All acts of violence must be taken seriously. But policymakers should not attribute blame to entire classes of people when individuals commit crimes.
The research does not support the view that immigrants commit crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants might have less law enforcement contact compared to nonimmigrants. Focusing on the facts is imperative, especially given that immigration has become a top issue for voters ahead of the election.
Substantial research has assessed the relationship between immigration and crime. Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite. Studies have also examined the impact of the concentration of immigrants in a community on crime patterns, finding that immigration is associated with lower crime rates and an increase in structural factors — such as social connection and economic opportunity — that are linked to neighborhood safety.
When looking specifically at the relationship between undocumented immigrants and crime, researchers come to similar conclusions. Numerous studies show that undocumented immigration does not increase violent crime; research examining crime rates in so-called sanctuary cities also found no discernable difference when compared to similarly situated cities without sanctuary policies. One study that focused on drug crimes and driving under the influence found that unauthorized immigration status was associated with reductions in arrests for those offenses.
The research also shows that overall, immigrants have a similar or even lower likelihood of incarceration compared to native-born Americans, a trend that holds for immigrants from various source countries. For example, one study found that undocumented immigrants are 33 percent less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the United States. Indications of a negative relationship between immigration and crime also emerge when looking at conviction rates.
In a Texas study, undocumented immigrants were found to be 47 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime in 2017 than native-born Americans. More recently, a study looked at census data over a 150-year period; since 1870, incarceration rates of immigrants are actually slightly lower than U.S.-born people and that gap widens in recent years with immigrants 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens.
Despite claims from conservative media and campaign rhetoric pointing to immigration as the cause of crime increases, there is no evidence that immigration — and in particular the recent influx of immigrants to Democratic-run cities — is causing a “crime wave.”
The Pew Research Center reported in 2017 that, nationally, 45% of our foreign-born population were naturalized citizens. Another 27% were lawful permanent residents. Another six percent were temporary lawful residents. Only 34% were unauthorized immigrants—some 10.5 million people spread throughout our 50 states.
World Population Review noted in 2020, at the end of the Trump term, that this country “has the highest immigration population in the world at 50.6 million” people, about 15% of our total population. And we welcomed people from more than 200 countries and territories. The Review noted that in 2020, Mexico had the most immigrants to this country (hardly a surprise) at more than 100,000, more than the number of immigrants from India (47,000) and China (41,000) combined. Here’s a compilation of our top ten contributors of immigrants.
Here’s the compilation of our top ten immigrant-contributing countries as of 2020:
Mexico 100,325
India 46,363
China 41,483
Dominican Republic 30,005
Vietnam 29,995
Philippines 25,491
El Salvador, 17,907
Brazil 16,746
Cuba 16,367
South Korea, 16,244
Honestly, do we REALLY have an immigration problem in Missouri? We certainly do not have one that merits the scare language we are hearing from some of our political candidates.
We turn to the American Immigration Council that says only four percent of Missouri’s population are immigrants while another four percent of us are native-born but have at least one immigrant parent. That works out to 122,742 women, 111,553 men, and 24,095 children.
Eighty-six percent of Missouri’s emigrants speak English “well” or “very well.”
Seventeen percent of our immigrants have less than a high school diploma. That’s about double the percent of native-born Missourians. Thirty-one percent of our native-born Missourians have not progressed beyond high school, almost twice the percentage of the immigrant population (18%).
But College education? Sixty-five percent of immigrant Missourians have some college or a college degree or more. That’s five percentage points more than the natives. And when it comes to degrees, 44% of our immigrants have one but only 29% of the natives do.
Now we get to the exportables.
The Pew Trust says we have about 60,000 undocumented immigrants in Missouri. That is only about ONE ONE-HUNDREDTH OF ONE PERCENT (0.01) of our population.
These candidates expect us get all frothy about 1/100th of 1% percent of the population of Missouri—and they want to expend huge amounts of resources to run them out of the state while refusing to indicate any sort of leadership on more broadly-significant needs for the remaining 99.99% of us.
No matter what you might think of undocumented immigrants, consider the family disruptions that will happen with the great immigrant roundup—More than 34,500 United States citizens live with at least one undocumented family member, according to American Progress.org, which also says two percent of Missouri’s children live with at least one undocumented family member.
The numbers also include 3,010 “dreamers,” young people covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Another 37-hundred people have been granted legal status under the program.
Five percent of Missouri’s labor force are immigrant workers—more than 164,000 people. About 31,400 of those people work in manufacturing, 24,600 are in health care and social assistance. Nineteen thousand more are in accommodation and food services, 19,000 are in educational services and more than 15,500 are in professional. Scientific, and technical services.
Taxes don’t care if someone is legal or illegal. If they get a paycheck, they pay taxes and newamericaneconomy.org says immigrants paid almost two-Billion dollars in federal taxes and more than 790 million dollars in state and local taxes in 2018. UNDOCUMENTED immigrants paid an estimated 107-million dollars in federal taxes and more than 62-million in state and local taxes that same year.
Our immigrants spent $6.8-Billion in Missouri in 2018.
And almost 15,000 of them owned businesses that, in 2018 generated about $400-million in business income.
There undoubtedly are newer statistics but they likely are different only by a few degrees.
About those illegals—
The Migration Policy Institute figures Missouri has 54,000 unauthorized immigrants. About two-thirds are from Mexico and Central America. Two-thirds have been in this state for ten or fewer years.
Four-thousand of them are younger than 16. More than half are 25-55. Eight thousand are married to a United States citizen. Three-thousand more are married to a legal permanent resident.
Twenty-nine percent of the immigrants are not in the work force—many being children and/or stay-at-home parents.
One statistic that is missing from all of these studies is a statistic often cited but does not exist.:
—how many jobs terrible people have “taken” from Missourians. Let’s see some statistics on the “replacement” contention that show a genuine effort to replace American workers with unregistered foreigners.
There is no immigrant Mafia walking into businesses, pointing guns at owners’ heads, and telling them to give a job to an immigrant or to fire a native Missourian so an immigrant can have a particular position. Have you ever seen any help-wanted ads that say, “Native-born Missourians not wanted?” Immigrants are not replacing anybody.
Immigrants are the political whipping boys and girls of too many of our candidates who apparently have nothing significant to offer in terms of initiatives and programs that will help all ends of all boats to rise.
If the GWOT had done its job, these candidates might have nothing to talk about except more important issues that have a direct impact on all of us—-and Heaven forbid that they might ever do that.