Illegals & Crime: A Bedtime Scary Tale

The president has reopened the immigration debate to jeers from left & right. What I’d like to see is evidence of the effects on the economy & crime. Are US jobs coming back faster because of the crackdown? I see no evidence. Is the crackdown reducing crime? Again no evidence. You’ll hear stories that crime along the border is down since Obama increased deportations (ostensibly concentrating on criminals) but border crime was down already.
In fact, in response to Speaker Boehner’s claim that illegal immigration equals crime, Texas Congressman Sylvestre Reyes posted statistics that were dripping with irony:

“Speaker Boehner should focus on controlling the level of violence in his own state before tarnishing the image of border communities that remain among the safest places to live in America…the fact remains that the six largest cities in Ohio all have higher rates of violence and crime than every major city along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, the Speaker’s own district in Dayton, Ohio saw more homicides in 2009 and 2010 than Texas’ four largest border cities combined, despite the fact that Dayton’s population of 141,500 is only about one-tenth of the size by comparison.

-DR