(via spytap:desnoise:spytap:ericmortensen:mikehudack:asprettyasasong:abbyjean)
I’m way into normalizing and reforming immigration, because I really like the idea of our country as one that it’s easy to get into and make a life in. So I double-checked the stats above.
Turns out that while the murder rate has gone down in these border cities, it’s still high in some cities.
The 2009 national murder rate was about 5 per 100,000 people. Phoenix’s murder rate was a whopping 16.9. San Diego’s was 3. If Tucson’s went down 46%, then it was 5.6. I couldn’t figure out El Paso’s, but it’s famously low.
Then I went to Wikipedia’s chart of 2008 data and got slightly different answers. For example, this data gives Phoenix a 2008 murder rate of 10.5, though the graphic above indicates a 2008 murder rate of 23%. Maybe it’s the mismatch in time frames, or maybe I messed up some math.
Anyway, in 2008, all the cities above were above the median violent crime rates (not just murder rates) for the 75 most-populated U.S. cities. I had to go up 37 cities to reach Tucson, and the only other border-state cities with more crime were Houston, Dallas, Albuquerque, Stockton and Oakland, all hundreds of miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. So statistically, urban crime does not seem to be a border-city problem. Also, fences are ugly.