This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 27th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's a persistent myth that immigrants tend to be criminals.

In fact, immigrants tend to commit crimes at lower rates than Native-born Americans,

and for good reasons.

Alex Narasta directs immigration policy studies at the Cato Institute.

We spoke last week about what data from Texas and the rest of the

United States tells us about immigrants and crime.

What makes Texas a good case for examining crime rates related to immigration.

Of all the states in the country, Texas is the only one that identifies arrestees and those convicted of crimes by their immigration status

and tracks them throughout the entire criminal justice, from the point they're arrested

to the point they're convicted.

It's the only one that tracks it.

And so as a result of that, we have sort of a very complete picture

of those criminals who are illegal immigrants, who are legal

immigrants, and those who are Native-born Americans. What does that give us in

terms of understanding with greater depth, any relationship that might exist between immigrants and crime?

So it allows us to cut through a lot of the confusion.

Since no other states take this data,

the federal government doesn't take this data,

we, there's a lot of speculation about whether illegal immigrants

have a higher or lower crime rate than Native-born

...