Arizona Border Violence a Myth

One of the Nations Safest Corridors

In the wake of U.S. District Judge Susan Block's recent decision striking down important provisions of Arizona's controversial immigration law new data confirms that increasing violence in Arizona is a myth. Two months ago, I wrote about the blatantly false pretenses under which Arizona's immigration law was enacted, Arizona Ignores Facts, Attacks Immigration. http://mattmangino.blogspot.com/2010/06/arizona-ignores-facts-attacks.html

Governor Jan Brewer said that the principle reason for enacting immigration law was, "the border-related violence and crime due to illegal immigration." Time Magazine again makes the argument that the towns along the Mexican border represent, "one of the nations safest corridors."

Below is an excerpt from the Time article. If you trying to make sense out of what is going on in Arizona it is worth reading.

According to the FBI, the four large U.S. cities (with populations of at least 500,000) with the lowest violent crime rates — San Diego, Phoenix and the Texas cities of El Paso and Austin — are all in border states. "The border is safer now than it's ever been," U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lloyd Easterling told the Associated Press last month. Even Larry Dever, the sheriff of Arizona's Cochise County, where the murder last March of a local rancher, believed to have been committed by an illegal immigrant, sparked calls for the law, conceded to the Arizona Republic recently that "we're not seeing the [violent crime] that's going on on the other side."

Consider Arizona itself — whose illegal-immigrant population is believed to be second only to California's. The state's overall crime rate dropped 12% last year; between 2004 and 2008 it plunged 23%. In the metro area of its largest city, Phoenix, violent crime — encompassing murder, rape, assault and robbery — fell by a third during the past decade and by 17% last year. The border city of Nogales (south of Tuscon), an area rife with illegal immigration and drug trafficking, hasn't logged a single murder in the past two years.

The rampant violence in Mexico has not spilled across the border. The best example is El Paso, Texas. According to Time, its cross-border Mexican sister city, Ciudad Juárez, suffered almost 2,700 murders last year, most of them drug-related, making it possibly the world's most violent town. But El Paso, a stone's throw across the Rio Grande, had just one murder.

Governor Brewer, Senator McCain and Sheriff Arpaio need to visit El Paso.

To read more: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2007474,00.html