Trump administration's immigrant crime math is for the birds

"Sparrow and Hibiscus"
by Utagawa Hiroshige
(Metropolitan Museum)

     In crazy times, do the math. The circumference of a circle is always 3.14159265 plus a smidgen times the diameter; 2+2 = 4, no matter how the president feels this morning.
     Math might be hard to focus on with Texas soldiers prepping to wander wandering the streets of Chicago, cosplaying an occupying force. Practicing scaring people, so they'll be ready come the 2026 elections.
     But I've been fiddling with numbers. Specifically related to crime, since tamping down immigrant violence is the pretext for bringing in soldiers to help kick them out.
     Looking at numbers underscores the lies we are being fed by the Trump administration. Since I don't want to drown you in figures, and I know MAGA sorts read this and are easily confused, let's consider just two groups: babies and immigrants.
     Republicans love babies. In their constant effort to drag America back to a 1950s Eden that never really existed, they push for more kids.
     Are babies dangerous? Yes, they are. Why? Because they grow up into adults. And how dangerous are U.S.-born adults? According to the CATO Institute, about 1.2% of U.S.-born citizens in their 30s have been incarcerated at some point, compared to 0.6% of immigrants without legal status undocumented immigrants and 0.3% of immigrants with legal status.
     How can that be? In case you have trouble grasping the complex math outlined above, allow me to offer a helpful metaphor.
     Imagine that if you are caught speeding, say going 45 mph in a 35-mph zone, you could be arrested and deported to a country you left as a toddler. You'd drive slower, right? That is the simple explanation for the lower immigrant crime rate. I only wish everybody was, you know, capable of absorbing new facts and altering their opinion based on those facts. I can; it's a beautiful thing.
     So to summarize, while Republicans push having babies and demonize immigrants, it is the babies who'll more likely turn into criminals, at a rate between two and four times the immigrants.
     Why isn't this more generally known? Because our leaders try to frighten us by waving specific cases of immigrant crime, as if that were proof. An example or two is not proof or — warning! foreign language ahead! — as the Germans say, "Eine Schwalbe macht noch keinen Sommer," or "one swallow does not a summer make."
     The phrase scans better in German. Because in English, "swallow" has two meanings. Primarily an action causing something to pass down the throat — either literally, like swallowing gum, or metaphorically, like swallowing a load of hooey because Fox News tells you over and over that it is true. In German, the word for swallow, in the gulp sense, schlucken is very different than swallow in the return-to-Capistrano sense, schwalbe.
      In English, only as an afterthought does "swallow" refer to the bird, and so the confusion that we are obviously prone to can occur. Does "one swallow" refer to ingesting, either food or nonsense; or a member of the family of songbirds with thin, streamlined bodies and long, pointed wings, suited to hunting insects, long-distance migrants who can cover ... ?
     Oops, I said a naughty word, didn't I? "Migrants." My apologies. Please stop gnawing the doorjamb. Although, let's go with that. The avian swallows in Illinois migrate from South America. It's almost as if nature herself dictated dictates immigration as an adaptive plan to encourage survival. Which, spoiler alert, she does.

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