Dan Shannon said he would look at issues from both sides. He used name calling in his article by using non professional names when referring to President Biden and President Carter. He did not explore the impacts on crime rates in communities with immigrant populations and the impact of poverty and lack of opportunity on all communities with high crime rates. He did not explore the value discussion: Are American lives more valuable than lives of other humans from other countries? He did not explore the issues of why people leave their countries of origin.

The immigration and crime discussion is more complex than the fear that Mr. Shannon’s article promoted.

People much smarter than I or Dan have done research on improving our immigration system and finding methods to address issues in countries where people die trying to leave. Use Google Scholar and read some research.

The answers to preventing crime among those born in America is to discover ways to support families and communities to be successful, safe and hopeful. There is a higher chance of committing a crime by any child from immigrant or from American families when they are raised in a community with high crime and little hope, and when they do not graduate from high school. Also, in my research, the crimes reported by Dan Shannon are federal crimes and performed by ~2 percent of deportable illegal immigrants.

The following article addresses some of the issues I mention above and brought up by Dan Shannon. Please take the time to read the following section from “Immigration and Crime” by Frances Bernat (https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.93):

“Ferraro (2014) analyzed the relationship between crime and immigration between 2000 and 2010 using Uniform Crime Report data. Ferraro found that, although U.S. cities experienced an increase in their populations during the 10-year period, there was a decrease in the overall crime rate and a reduction in both in violent and property crime. He found, similar to Vélez and Lyons (2012) and Stansfield et al. (2013), that crime was not associated with cities that had large immigration populations, regardless of whether there were long-established immigrant communities in the city, or if there were large foreign-born immigrant settlements formed within the previous five years. He suggested that the largest predictor of crime is socioeconomic disadvantage, rather than increased population or the number of immigrants living in a community.”

Crime actually went down in those communities that had an unstable community and were then inhabited by immigrant families, creating a diverse community.

Peggy LovellFord

Enumclaw