Immigrants Are Neither Murderers Nor Rapists

I am an immigrant. I came to the United States from Egypt in the 1980s, carrying two suitcases and a doctorate in education. I did not come to murder anyone. I did not come to commit crimes. I came, as most immigrants come, in search of opportunity — the chance to work, to teach, to contribute to the society that had agreed to receive me.

I say this not to make myself the subject of this essay, but because the personal is sometimes the most effective rebuttal to the political. When a prominent politician stands before a crowd and declares that immigrants are "bringing drugs, crime," that they are "rapists," he is talking about me. He is talking about my neighbors, my colleagues, my students. He is talking about millions of human beings whom he has never met and whose lives he has made no effort to understand.

What the Evidence Shows

The claim that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens is not merely offensive; it is empirically false. Study after study, conducted by researchers across the political spectrum, has found that immigrants — including undocumented immigrants — commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. This finding is robust and consistent. It has been replicated in different time periods, using different methodologies, examining different immigrant populations.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank not known for its sympathy toward immigration, has published extensive research demonstrating that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born citizens. A 2020 study found that undocumented immigrants had a 45 percent lower felony conviction rate than native-born citizens in Texas. Similar findings have been reported in studies of other states and at the national level.

Why might this be? Several explanations have been proposed. Immigrants, particularly those who have gone through the difficult and often dangerous process of coming to a new country, tend to be highly motivated individuals who are acutely aware of the precariousness of their situation. They have strong incentives to avoid any behavior that might jeopardize their status or their ability to remain in the country. They are also, in many cases, deeply embedded in family and community networks that provide social support and accountability.

The Economic Contribution

Beyond the question of crime, immigrants make enormous contributions to the American economy. They start businesses at higher rates than native-born citizens. They are disproportionately represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and medicine. They fill essential roles in agriculture, construction, food service, and healthcare — roles that the economy could not function without.

The National Academy of Sciences, in a comprehensive 2016 report, found that immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the United States. Immigrants and their children have been among the most important drivers of innovation in the American economy, founding companies, filing patents, and creating jobs.

This is not to say that immigration has no costs or complications. Like any significant social phenomenon, it creates challenges as well as benefits. There are legitimate questions to be asked about the pace of immigration, the resources available to support integration, the effects on particular communities and labor markets. These are questions that deserve serious, evidence-based discussion.

The Human Dimension

But the discussion we are having is not serious, and it is not evidence-based. It is a discussion driven by fear and resentment, by the exploitation of economic anxiety and cultural insecurity for political gain. It is a discussion in which millions of human beings are reduced to a caricature — the criminal immigrant, the rapist, the drug dealer — that bears no relationship to the reality of their lives.

I think of my students — the young men and women who came to my classes from Mexico, from Central America, from the Philippines, from Nigeria, from China, from India. They came with notebooks and pens and a hunger for knowledge that put many of their native-born classmates to shame. They worked two jobs to pay their tuition. They sent money home to their families. They dreamed of becoming teachers, nurses, engineers, lawyers.

These are the immigrants that the rhetoric of fear and hatred erases. These are the human beings who are reduced, in the political imagination, to a threat — a wave, an invasion, a plague. The dehumanization is not accidental. It is a technique, as old as politics itself, for mobilizing fear and resentment against a vulnerable group that cannot easily defend itself.

A Nation of Immigrants

The United States is, in the most literal sense, a nation of immigrants. With the exception of the Indigenous peoples whose land was taken from them, every American is either an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants. The country's history is a history of successive waves of newcomers — Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese, Somali — each wave initially met with suspicion and hostility, each wave eventually absorbed into the national fabric, enriching it in the process.

The hostility toward the current wave of immigrants is not new. It is the same hostility that greeted the Irish in the 1840s, the Chinese in the 1880s, the Italians and Jews at the turn of the twentieth century. The specific fears change; the underlying dynamic does not. And in each case, the fears proved to be unfounded. The immigrants did not destroy the country. They built it.

Immigrants are not murderers. They are not rapists. They are human beings — complex, various, flawed, and capable, like all human beings, of both great harm and great good. The evidence suggests, overwhelmingly, that they tend toward the latter. They deserve to be seen clearly, in their full humanity, rather than through the distorting lens of political fear.