In light of recent – and upcoming – elections around the world, and particularly relating to the UK and US elections, both of which were framed around this issue to a major degree, I thought it may be worth poking holes in common right-wing immigration narratives.

One of the most common deceptions is that immigrants are a source of crime and strife. It is a myth, perpetuated without reliable evidence, and it is not without irony that those sharing these claims insist ‘the other side’ (namely, the political left) are the victims of/disseminators of propaganda. One such myth is the idea that immigrants are responsible for increases in crime, that they take jobs, and that they are unwilling to assimilate.

Simply put, immigrants have become a convenient scapegoat for the political right. Instead of a deep, meaningful examination of the social and economic divisions within western society (which would massively disadvantage those holding wealth and power), we are led to believe the dirty immigrant is coming to our country to steal our resources and destroy our society. Powerful men like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage repeat these myths, because the concept of ‘othering’ people and sowing division has long been a powerful, if misleading, means of grabbing and maintaining power, and it also serves as a powerful distraction. Let’s not forget that ‘othering’ people, and dehumanising them, is straight from the Nazi playbook.

Immigrants and crime is an oft-cited claim, a scare tactic if you will, employed to maximise the ‘othering’ effect. Is there any grounds to believe this?

To quote from the Stanford Institute For Economic Policy Research:

Opponents of immigration often argue that immigrants drive up crime rates. But newly released research from Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky and his co-authors finds that hasn’t been the case in America for the last 140 years.
The study reveals that first-generation immigrants have not been more likely to be imprisoned than people born in the United States since 1880.
Today, immigrants are 30 percent less likely to be incarcerated than are U.S.-born individuals who are white, the study finds. And when the analysis is expanded to include Black Americans — whose prison rates are higher than the general population — the likelihood of an immigrant being incarcerated is 60 percent lower than of people born in the United States. 
While other research has also debunked claims that immigration leads to more crime, this study of incarceration rates provides the broadest historical look at the relationship between immigration and crime across the country and over time, says author Abramitzky. Abramitzky is the Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Economics and senior associate dean of social sciences in the School of Humanities and Sciences, as well as a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).
The study is detailed in a working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, it focuses on immigrants present in the Census regardless of their legal status and on men between the ages of 18 and 40.
“From Henry Cabot Lodge in the late 19th century to Donald Trump, anti-immigration politicians have repeatedly tried to link immigrants to crime, but our research confirms that this is a myth and not based on fact,” says Abramitzky, whose 2022 book, Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success, examines the many misconceptions around immigration.

Next up, we have a Reuters post, highlighting both the Nazi-esque rhetoric of Donald Trump, and the inaccuracies in his position:

With the notion that immigration leads to more crime thoroughly debunked, we can move on to whether or not immigrants steal jobs, and harm wages. This post relates to the UK:

Research into the economics of migration, as conducted by the IZA World of Labor Institute, tells us that most countries actually need migration. This is because native workforces are often not large enough or specialised enough to handle market or technological demands.
However, immigration affects job markets and industries differently, according to skill-level. And, naturally, there will always be some healthy competition between native and immigrant workers operating at the same level. But let’s look at things a little more closely.
At a high skill level, hiring immigrants is a very reasonable solution – particularly in the short-term. Occasionally, natives don’t possess the requisite skill set – in time, once up-skilled, native workers can compete for these jobs, too. And, actually, this works to create more dynamism, more motivation and movement, within UK job markets.
At a lower-skilled employment level, the picture can seem a little more complicated. Here, the roles often include repetitive, manual tasks – and so, naturally, employers see no difference between low-skilled immigrant or low-skilled native applicants. This can result in an overcrowding of this segment of the job market – which can see some natives lose out on roles to immigrants. Additionally, immigrants – often struggling to establish themselves in a new home – will often work for lower wages, and endure undesirable hours or shifts. This, in turn, can result in some employers (often in the agricultural and seasonal sectors) becoming over reliant on immigrant workers. But this is not sustainable in the long-term; and the balance of immigrant and native workers is typically restored.
So, we’ve seen that there can be some job displacement – but it is usually only ever in the short-term. In fact, as research shows, immigrants often simply take the jobs natives don’t want. And this has been found to actually drive the upward socio-economic movement of natives; benefiting them by encouraging them to up-skill.
We wouldn’t call this ‘stealing’ jobs.

https://www.worldremit.com/en/blog/community/immigrants-stealing-jobs

So, it would seem immigrants are generally filling the roles that natives either can’t or won’t do. In some cases, immigrants are actually being exploited as sources of cheap labour, victims of a system built around valuing profit ahead of people.

Recently, we had a wave of violence across UK cities. There was an outpouring of misplaced anger, directed – incorrectly – at immigrants (and against Muslims, a related issue, for another post). As rioters destroyed shops, damaged vehicles, and even injured police officers, something became crystal clear: the destruction wrought across our cities was the result of ignorance. The rioters acted out of an anti-immigration sentiment, fuelled by the mistaken belief the suspect in the Southport knife attack was a Muslim immigrant. It transpires the suspect is British-born, and raised in a Christian household. Unfortunately, people are so prepared to buy into ignorant inflammatory rhetoric, that they will not do even a cursory element of research. The rioters carried out a wide range of criminal acts, ironically in opposition to a criminal act from an immigrant, who wasn’t even an immigrant.

Next, we have the open border question, which focuses specifically at the USA. Conservatives and the right would have us believe that this is a problem made by Democrats, and that Democrats have failed to resolve it. Leaving aside questions as to the severity of the problem (certainly, crime is not the factor Republicans think it is, and nor are job opportunities), it is worth repeating the fact that Republicans – at the behest of Donald Trump – blocked efforts for greater border security.

Why might Trump have done this? It’s simple, Trump wanted to use a manufactured border ‘crisis’ to make himself appear tough on immigration, and gain votes so he could take power. If he were acting altruistically, Trump would have backed border control measures, instead of intentionally seeking to make a potential problem worse. Instead, he acted out of his self-interests. A great many conservatives have been silent on Trump’s self-serving posture on this matter, preferring to continue to blame Democrats for the alleged problems of immigration, whilst overlooking the facts, both of immigrant conduct, and Trump’s efforts to exploit a problem for personal gain.

Then again, many of Trump’s supporters appear to have a blind spot where he is concerned. I have written before that they seem to have a messiah complex where Trump is concerned. He repeated clearly deceitful remarks about Haitian immigrants eating pets during his debate with Kamala Harris, and has subsequently doubled-down on these erroneous claims. It seems Trump is willing not only to employ self-serving political tactics to create a problem (hardly a patriotic act), and he is willing to repeat absolutely insane lies about immigrants.

The ‘crisis’ that the likes of Trump and Farage have invented is not the true source of so many societal problems. The true problem is greed, and in a follow up post, I will examine this in more detail.