Kris Kobach LITERALLY Copy-Pasting Your Uncle's 'Illeagalz' Chain Emails
Fox News knew when they made that chyron it was begging to be cropped like this.
Donald Trump's completely objective Fraudulent Voter Commission co-chair Kris Kobach has excreted another of his regular columns for Dead Breitbart's Home For Terrified Old Whites, this time making all sorts of bullshit claims about how Illegal Alien Crimers are an imminent threat to YOU, the average terrified reader of Breitbart. Oh, sure, he's used as his "sources" a load of pure-bullshit phony statistics culled from wingnut chain emails that have circulated for years, as Media Matters documents in some detail, and at least one of his sources is an out and out Holocaust-denyin' white nationalist, but why quibble about "facts" when you have a whole Internet to plunder for any "evidence" you might want to use? Also, that bit about the Nazi dude is pretty racist, isn't it?
Kobach's purpose, as ever, is to portray all undocumented migrants as likely murderers, on the occasion of the trial of Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who's accused of murdering Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015. Obviously, if one illegal border-crosser is a killer, they all are, or could be. And Kobach is out to prove -- despite admitting that solid data are hard to come by -- that "There are many indicators in the crime data suggesting that illegal aliens commit crimes [...] at a much higher rate" than American citizens, or than legal immigrants. After all, they broke the law by coming here, so that almost certainly indicates a predisposition to lawlessness. This makes perfect logical sense, just as we're certain that almost everyone who's ever been convicted of murder also has been nabbed for speeding or parking violations.
One bit of logic Kobach doesn't mention at all: Undocumented immigrants have one hell of an incentive to remain on the right side of the law, since the last thing they want is to come to the attention of law enforcement.
So after admitting that "it is actually quite difficult to calculate exact crime rates for the illegal alien population," Kobach proceeds to offer his "evidence" that suggests they're a nasty bunch. Pity that much of it is garbage taken from immigration-panic emails. For instance, says Kobach:
75 percent of those on the most wanted criminals lists in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Albuquerque are illegal aliens.
More than 53 percent of burglaries investigated in the border region states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas are committed by illegal aliens.
Bit of a problem there, as Media Matters explains in some detail:
His bullet point about the "most wanted" list has appeared virtually word-for-word in letters, comment sections, Yahoo! Answers, and message boards going back over a decade. For instance, the claim was reposted to the Free Republic message board in November 2006 and was taken from CaPoliticalNews.com, which claimed the numbers were from “INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants.”
But so what if it's copy-pasted word for word from a bunch of places, as long as it's true? Except -- please try not to be too shocked -- it's also garbage. The Los Angeles Times debunked it in 2009, noting that the supposed report claimed as the source doesn't exist (and that the "INS" ceased to exist after the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003).
The burglaries claim? Also bullshit taken verbatim from a bunch of chain emails, supposedly from the "Foreign National Crime Information Center,” which is not a government agency but yet another immigration-scare website, and which warns on its own site, "DISREGARD THE BELOW STATISTICS, THEY ARE not current AND SEVERAL YEARS OLD" -- but they're scary numbers, so the group keeps them up. Rightwing research at its best, and now it's in Breitbart, with the endorsement of a genuine US Government Official.
And then there's the Nazi dude. This is Kobach's cited source for the already-spurious "most wanted lists" claim; he links to a piece by Peter B. Gemma at the very reliable "Constitution Party" website. Surprise! Mr. Gemma is the subject of his very own featured article at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which documents Gemma's membership in the racist Council of Conservative Citizens, his fondness for Holocaust denial, his joint appearances with KKK leaders David Duke and Don Black, and his contributions to any number of white supremacist websites.
But we're sure he knows some very fine people, too. He's been cited by a guy who was appointed to a presidential commission, after all, so he must be a respected researcher.
Beyond his trafficking in bad data, let's also congratulate Kobach on another data point that appears not to have sprung from his Research Methods 101 course at Trump University: In one of his bullet points, Kobach offers this proof that illegal immigrants are prone to crime:
Looking just at the aliens we are deporting, criminality is pervasive. In FY 2015 (the last year for which we have complete statistics), 59 percent of removed aliens had been convicted of criminal offenses (other than their immigration violations). And many more had been arrested or charged with crimes, but not yet convicted.
And who was president in 2015? Some guy whose immigration enforcement priority was deporting aliens charged with or convicted of crimes. Holy circular logic, Batman! Next, Kobach will exclaim in amazement that you should avoid hospitals, since illness is pervasive among the people admitted.
The worst part for Kobach on that one? He can't even claim he plagiarized it. He appears to have come up with that shining illogic all on his very own.
[ Media Matters / Breitbart / SPLC / CNN ]
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