WI Rep. Gwen Moore Repeats This Long-Debunked Lie About Illegal Alien Crime
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Gwen Moore trotting out the "illegal aliens commit crimes at lower rates than citizens" line isn't new, but it's still worth stopping and asking why a sitting member of Congress keeps reaching for a stat that researchers have picked apart for years. The problem isn't just that it's wrong. It's that it's wrong in a very specific, very convenient way: it lumps in a population that's disproportionately young and male, compares it to the general citizen population which includes toddlers and grandmothers, and calls that an apples-to-apples comparison.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
There was a time when Gwen Moore was this writer's Congresswoman. Those days are over, but Gwen Moore continues to make a fool of herself on the national stage. This time, she's sharing the debunked stat Democrats loved to parade out about illegal aliens, which proves she doesn't understand statistics (among many other things).
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Gwen Moore trotting out the "illegal aliens commit crimes at lower rates than citizens" line isn't new, but it's still worth stopping and asking why a sitting member of Congress keeps reaching for a stat that researchers have picked apart for years. The problem isn't just that it's wrong. It's that it's wrong in a very specific, very convenient way: it lumps in a population that's disproportionately young and male, compares it to the general citizen population which includes toddlers and grandmothers, and calls that an apples-to-apples comparison. It isn't.
This matters because the stat gets deployed for one purpose only: to shut down conversation before it starts. If you can convince people that illegal immigration and crime have nothing to do with each other, you never have to talk about enforcement, detention capacity, or why local jails keep encountering the same names on ICE detainers. Moore isn't confused about the math. She's using bad math to avoid a harder conversation about a broken system she and her party spent years refusing to fix.
What's frustrating is how predictable this has become. Every time border numbers or crime numbers get uncomfortable, out comes the recycled talking point, dressed up like fresh research. It wasn't true when Democrats leaned on it during the last administration and it isn't true now. Voters in Milwaukee, where Moore used to actually have to answer to people directly, deserve a representative who deals in facts rather than a debunked applause line she knows plays well on cable news.
At some point the question isn't whether the stat is accurate. It's why a member of Congress keeps using it anyway.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.