By Jim Bloch
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs – the people that came in,” said Donald Trump during his presidential debate with Kamala Harris on Sept. 10. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
It may not have been Trump’s most egregious lie during the debate, which included assertions that Democrats would permit the execution of babies – what he called abortion after the ninth month. But it was still shocking.
All major news networks had reported that the pet eating story was false, quoting the Springfield city manager, police officials and residents. After the debate, the Springfield, OH resident who made the initial online post that fueled the lies apologized for her actions.
“On top of that, we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump said. “…They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently… They’re at the highest level of criminality. And we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast.”
He echoed these claims in Flint Sept. 17.
Immigrants commit fewer violent crimes than non immigrants
“The foreign-born, in fact, are much less likely than the native-born to commit violent crimes,” said Nancy Foner, professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College. Foner discussed immigration July 16 in a form held by SciLine, the scientifically-grounded reporting resource for journalists. “And in fact, cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have much lower crime and violence than comparable non-immigrant neighborhoods — leading a well-known sociologist to say, ‘If you want to be safe, move to an immigrant neighborhood’.”
Fact checkers concurred.
“There is no evidence that counties are emptying their prisons – or mental institutions … and sending people to illegally migrate to the U.S.,” according to PolitiFact, a nonpartisan fact checking group after the debate. “Both the FBI’s preliminary data for 2023 and multiple nongovernmental efforts to track crime data in 2023 and 2024 have a decline in violent crime since … 2022.”
As a footnote, immigrants have not been trying to assassinate Trump, but two native-born white men have.
Immigrant origins have changed, but most are here legally
Trump’s rants give the impression that most immigrants are in the U.S. illegally. In truth, about 25 percent of the immigrant population is undocumented.
The last half century has seen unprecedented immigration into the U.S. According to the U.S. Census, about 49 million immigrants live in the U.S.
The numbers “are truly astonishing,” said Foner. That’s the highest number since Census records have been kept.”
It’s also more people than live in Germany.
About 14 percent of the U.S. population is foreign born. In 1970, the 10 million immigrants accounted for five percent of the population.
One big change is where immigrants are coming from. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. The act abolished national quotas that had governed U.S. immigration since 1920, which set limits on how many people could come to the country from specific countries. Before 1965, it was hard for residents of southern and eastern Europe to emigrate to the U.S. The country “barred those from Asia and non-whites from entering the country,” according to the LBJ Presidential Library.
The major impetus for new immigration has not been Biden and Harris letting immigrants into the U.S., but the act itself. Couple that with political violence and unstable economies in a number of nations, plus climate change, and you have a recipe for high immigration.
This is the period of U.S. immigration, prior to 1965, which Trump appears to be longing for.
The total “includes 11 million undocumented immigrants. They’re really 1 out of 4 immigrants in the nation,” said Foner.
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
