Sean Hannity's Truth Problem

        Serial liar and Trump apologist, Sean Hannity, just can’t seem to separate fact from fiction in his own twisted mind. One recent  blatantly  specious allegation revolves around his attempts to convince the sceptics among us that there is a pressing "crisis" necessitating a border wall. This, apparently, because his idol isn’t having a lot of luck doing it.

        Hannity’s latest effort is a statistical ruse and one which I must believe he knows full well is fatally flawed. Hannity claimed, on Faux News, of course, that “17,000 individuals with criminal records were apprehended trying to cross the border" in 2018. He further alleged, without numbers than many of these persons (and he seemed to imply “most of these persons" were violent criminals.

        Factually, however, it’s critical for real understanding of the scope of his duplicity to evaluate this claim in real world context. Most of the 17,000-number had criminal records for previous attempts to enter the United States illegally, or other nonviolent crimes such as minor drug offenses, DUI stops, etc. Even more significantly, the majority of these people were trying to cross at legal points of entry, so no wall of any sort could or would have made the slightest difference. This is merely a variation on the other  claim, equally false, that heroin is “flooding into the US” across the Mexican border, when the overwhelming percentage comes into ports or across legal border crossings, again, truly unrelated to any “wall issue.”

       Unlike Mr. Hannity, I’m actually a data driven op-ed kind of guy, so here are some figures from US Customs and Border Patrol bounced against domestic figures. In some comparisons I’d like to make, there simply are no data available. So, here goes.

        Of the 17,000 totals, that is, all illegal entry attempts, 63% were at ports or crossings, remember and, of those attempting an illegal entry elsewhere, 13.5% were for DUI, specifically. This comes out to 817 persons when border/highway entries are removed. Just as a comparison, 3.1% of Americans (over 10 million) are arrested for DUI every year. (yes, really!) This tabulates only those “arrested.” (Actual numbers as estimated by organizations which do this sort of thing, are that about 1/3 of all Americans (109,000,000) drive under the influence daily!) So, for argument’s sake, let’s not consider the DUIs as violent. Then we have the attempts to reenter (technically if an individual has been apprehended attempting to enter illegally, even if simply denied entry and sent back, they have a “criminal” record. 47% of ALL crossings where the individual “had a criminal record” were of this nature, with no other “crime” involved.  So, Hannity’s total of 17,000, disregarding “second entry” or “previous DIU” or “other” non-violent (non-drug, weapons or violent offence) circumstances is now just 3,961 individuals, of which 2,654, were apprehended at legal points of entry.

        Why do all this math? Simply because it shows that for all Hannity’s posturing and scare mongering with that 17,000 figure, the real “wall-relevant” number is, at most, about 1300. But you may well say, “They’re still criminals.” Yep. So are some of our own citizens; and statistics show, in every study ever done, that immigrants (even factoring admittedly heinous animals like MS 13, far too many of which entered legally, or are home grown) commit violent crimes at a lower rate than your friends and neighbors!

          The Trump propaganda machine would like you to believe that immigrants are more likely to engage in criminal activity than native-borns. So would Mr. Hannity. Realty is shockingly contradictory. Texas is a good representative state to use, here, because national data is sketchy, partially because before the "Wall shit storm" no one tracked it all that closely on a national basis. What the Texas data shows, however,  is that for all crimes, property and homicides combined,  Illegals commit 56% FEWER of these crimes and legal immigrants, a staggering 89% FEWER crimes!   

       Moreover, on a nationwide basis, as indicated above, states with larger shares of undocumented immigrants tended to have lower crime rates than states with smaller shares in the years 1990 through 2014. "Increases in the undocumented immigrant population within states are associated with significant decreases in the prevalence of violence,"

        So, what have we learned? First and foremost, Hannity grossly exaggerated the actual numbers of undocumented persons who would be affected in any way by a wall. Second, and perhaps even more blatant, are two additional distinct impressions he conveyed by implication. One, that "most" of those "criminal records" were for violent crimes, which data disproves and the other, equally false, that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit violent crimes against the rest of us. Both these are diametrically untrue, and the numbers prove it.   

       On refection I could have saved myself (and the reader, if still with me) a lot of time by simply stating what we already knew at the outset – Sean Hannity is a bloviating talking head, devoid of conscience or credibility.