Despite Kristi Noem's slurs, immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native born citizens

If you could be exiled from your home forever for a speeding ticket, how fast would you drive? If the slightest brush with the law might result in you being torn from your family and sent to a country you last saw when you were 2, how cautiously would you go about your day?

I mention this because, in the first draft of this column, I began with the hard statistics demonstrating that immigrants, as a group, are more law-abiding than citizens born in the United States. It just makes sense; they have to be.

But numbers are cold, while stories sizzle.

This is not to suggest immigrants never commit crimes. Awful crimes. They do. They are, after all, still human beings — that privilege has not been snatched away from them, yet. Though according to the script we're following, that is coming next.

But one example — or three — is proof of nothing. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is oblivious to that, and hopes you are too. She brought her Immigrants = Criminals Tour roadshow to Springfield Wednesday to complain about our state's policy of not helping federal immigration officers randomly pluck immigrants off the street and ship them to foreign countries to suffer fates unknown for the crime of not having their paperwork in order. Or having their paperwork in order and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“People are dying every day because of these policies. People are evading justice,” Noem told reporters during a news conference near the scene of a murder committed, allegedly, by an immigrant. As if "evading justice" weren't a contender for a chapter heading summarizing our current political nadir in some future history textbook. "Evading Justice — America in the era of blatant official criminality, 2025 — 2029."

Assuming we have accurate history books, which right now is no sure bet.

Noem went on to fire off the administration blunderbuss of false invective.

“Governors like JB Pritzker don’t care if gangbangers, murderers, rapists and pedophiles roam free in his state," she said.

Initially, I grabbed a handful of statistics to throw back. How immigrants are 60 percent less likely to wind up in jail than citizens born here. But figures are complicated, when you dwell in the world of fact, there are many asterisks — the figure could be 30%. Or 40%.

That's why so many Americans prefer to live in fantasyland of lies — truth is complicated. Life is so simple when you can just make it up.

Maybe best to set aside numbers. Pritzker served Noem with a taste of her own medicine.

"Secretary Noem has often been spotted on television cosplaying law enforcement officers," his office announced. Then he reminded that casting others as dangerous cuts both ways: “We would urge all pet owners in the region to make sure all of your beloved animals are under watchful protection while the Secretary is in the region."

Remember that Noem, thinking it made her look tough, confessed in her memoir "No Going Back," that she "hated" her dog, Cricket, so led it to a gravel pit, then shot and killed the wirehair pointer — a crime under South Dakota law that she could have been charged with, and deported, if only she had been a Venezuelan waitress and not a cabinet officer.

Immigrants = criminals. The big lie being driven home. Noem also narrates a radio commercial aired in Chicago now, listing immigrant crimes with the tagline, "Leave now."

She couldn't hurt Illinois more if she tried. Maybe a bit of math here can be useful. The 2023 population of Illinois was about 12.6 million. Compared to a decade years earlier, when it was 12.9 million, meaning a loss of ... anybody? ... yes, that's correct, about 300,000 people. Is that a lot? Put it this way. If every single resident of the two largest cities in Illinois after Chicago, Aurora and Naperville, got up and left, that would be a loss of about 300,000 people.

So yes, a lot of people.

But in 2024, Illinois had its first surge in growth after over a decade of decline — about 67,000 people, the equivalent of a new Skokie. Due to immigration.

A shame we can't have a program where young, energetic people are encouraged to come to Illinois, get jobs and raise their families. Oh wait, we do. It's called being in the United States of America, the land of freedom and opportunity, built on immigration. These future citizens arrive, put down roots, and become more law-abiding than their neighbors.

Unless we let the feds pluck them off the street and ship them to a hellhole in El Salvador for the crime of being here.