Klamath Falls, OR—— VOICE stands for the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office. The president called for the creation of this office in an executive order signed on January 25 titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States. VOICE is just one part of this executive order, which also focuses on stopping federal funding of sanctuary cities and the enforcement of immigration laws.
Plans for the office had been laid out in recent DHS memos, but this was Trump's first time publicly highlighting it.
Trump said the U.S. must support law enforcement and support victims of crime, and the new office will provide a voice to people ignored by the media and "silenced by special interests."
Critics of the president’s approach to immigration say the proposal is misguided, in part because studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born U.S. citizens.
By creating an additional office with specific resources dedicated to only those who are victims of the same crimes committed against many Americans but perpetrated by a particular subset of criminals we are providing unequal enforcement of the law.
Multiple studies have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born U.S. citizens. A 2014 study published in the journal Justice Quarterly concluded that immigrations "exhibit remarkably low levels of involvement in crime across their life course."
It’s unclear how many people will qualify for its services. Numerous studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native born population. The fact that crime rates have not mirrored the steep rise in the number of undocumented immigrants also suggests that criminals represent a small sliver of that population.
Jail statistics back up that conclusion. Although immigrants, whether in the country legally or illegally, make up more than 13% of the total population, they only represent 4.6% of the prison population, according to an American Immigration Council study of Census data.
"In actuality, immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. The truth is that hard working immigrants help vitalize our economy at home and bolster our global competitiveness. We are strongest as a nation, when we embrace our diversity."
University of California in San Diego which "clearly found that immigrant-friendly communities are both safer and more economically vibrant."
The creation of VOICE has prompted confusion and anger among immigration experts and advocates, who have been quick to point out that targeting criminal immigrants makes little sense given crime statistics on the matter.
Decades-worth of data indicate that immigrants commit far less and are far less likely to commit crime than native born Americans, as has been reported by Business Insider's Veronika Bondarenko.
"The fact is, you can find crimes committed by any group, no matter how you define them. Immigrants, native-born, white men, Latino men — you're going to find criminals of any demographic category.
And to choose one and blame them for crime in general is just very disingenuous," said Walter Ewing, a senior researcher at the American Immigration Council, who added that VOICE is nothing short of "scapegoating."
Given that there is no data that proves undocumented immigrants are a demographic intrinsically prone to crime, blaming immigrants as a group for crime is poor logic, Ewing told Business Insider.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the VOICE program "ridiculous" on Wednesday, and said law enforcement should be targeting all crime — not just those incidents that involve immigrants.
"The overwhelming majority of immigrants are law-abiding, they want to be part of the American dream, and most Americans agree with that," Schumer said on CBS This Morning. "So to put an office like this out there shows how anti-immigrant this president is."
By James Garland of Tulelake News
Send sources on local and national news:
Email: tulelakenews@yahoo.com
Tulelake News
Comments
Post a Comment