Mexican President Vicente Fox compared the crime rates of Mexico and the U.S. on Friday.
"I saw that crime rates in the United States increased 3.5 percent so far this year. So they have their own problems," Fox said. "And with numbers of homicides, it's better we don't speak about them, because, even though they show up on the front pages every day, there are many fewer here than there."
He also said that rising crime is a problem of both sides of the fence and that the U.S. should worry about its own crime problem. The comments came in response to recent criticism of the number of kidnappings and murders in Mexican border towns and the advisory urging Americans to use extreme caution when traveling in Mexico.
But interestingly, Fox failed to mention that much of the U.S. violent crime is committed by Mexican nationals that have entered the country illegally.
Here's an interesting report from WorldNetDaily on the number of illegal aliens being tried for gang rapes.
And another about the murder of a Houston Police Officer.
Here's the FBI's UCR for 2005: Crime in the United States 2005.
Basically, overall property and violent crime was at a 32 year low, while robbery and gun violence was up from last year.
From FOX News:
The statistics bureau's victimization report found that the overall violent crime rate was unchanged in 2005 from the year before, at just over 21 crimes for every 1,000 individuals over age 12.
The property crime rate fell in 2005 from 161 crimes to 154 for every 1,000 people because of a drop in household thefts. Both rates were the lowest since the survey began in 1973.
[...]
Unlike the FBI report culled from police blotters, the statistic bureau makes estimates based on interviews with 134,000 people, so it counts not only reported crime but also crimes the police never hear about. Also, 53 percent of violent crimes and 60 percent of property crimes are never reported to the police.
Oddly enough, I couldn't find statistics for homicides and kidnappings in Mexico, especially with American citizens as victims. Guess they don't like to advertise.
The Mexican police and military, as well as the government are wholly and completely corrupted. And they take racial profiling to a new degree there, stopping non-Hispanics for made-up offenses, then letting the "violator" go for a small monetary donation. Yes, it's happened to me.
But Fox is right about one thing:
"There is work to be done on both sides. As we've always said, it's a shared responsibility."
Well, half right, anyway. There is a lot of work to be done, and it should be a shared responsibility. But the as we've always said part...hmm, not buying it. Mexico could improve conditions in the border towns - on both sides of the fence - if it would cooperate more with the illegal immigration issue.
But we all know that's not going to happen.
So it comes back to us. The American people need to force our elected officials to take some action on this issue. We need a fence. We need a new policy for immigration that does NOT include amnesty. We need to force employers to stop hiring illegals. And we need to work more closely with Mexican officials to improve things for all North Americans.
And we need to do it today.
Check out this illegal immigration fact sheet courtesy of California Conservative.
More goodies this weekend:
And the Milblogs:
Hiya there!..great post...Fox failed to mention that much of the U.S. violent crime is committed by Mexican nationals that have entered the country illegally.........minor detail eh?!
Posted by: Angel | September 25, 2006 at 06:06 AM
I have been saying the same thing for more years than I can remember. Mexico's largest export is criminals; violent criminals. In our politically correct society, we cannot bring this up. Just like we cannot say that Islam breeds terrorists.
Posted by: middleclassguy | September 25, 2006 at 02:43 PM
Let's deport all the Mexican immigrants back where they belong and then we'll see what Fox has to say when crime sky rockets.
Posted by: kate | September 25, 2006 at 03:56 PM