This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 16, 2015. I'm Caleb Brown.

There's a popular notion that immigrants are more likely than

Native-born Americans to commit crimes, but that belief deserves some scrutiny.

Alex Narasta, a policy analyst on immigration at the Cato Institute, says the data

don't support claims of an

immigrant crime wave. Earlier in January there was a terrible murder of a woman

named Kate Steinley in San Francisco by allegedly by an illegal immigrant who

had been deported numerous times re-entered. He had a criminal history surrounding

drugs, no violent convictions and this has really

sparked a debate over whether immigrants are more crime prone than

native-born Americans whether immigration or immigrants when they come here,

are more likely to commit crimes.

So I took a look at an enormous number of studies and academic papers try to figure that out.

So intuitively, do you have a sense of what people generally believe about immigrants in crime?

Most people believe that, and you can see this in polls, that immigrants are more likely to be violent

and property criminals, they're more likely to be murderers, rapists,

drunk drivers, things like this.

And this gets reiterated by the news because if, you know, just a normal American gets in a car accident and kill somebody

it's not really going to make the nightly news but if that person was all of a sudden

an immigrant or an illegal immigrant even

all of a sudden that's front page news.

And certain TV stars turned presidential candidates

...