Yesterday a thousand people jammed into the gymnasium of
Brooklyn-Guernsey-Malcom High School in Brooklyn, Iowa, population of 1,500, to
celebrate the funeral of Mollie Tibbetts. Tibbetts is a young woman
who went missing in July after going for an evening jog just outside of
Brooklyn, her hometown. She graduated from Brooklyn High School in 2017. When she went missing the community
conducted a five-week search to find her. She was found, but
tragically her dead body was in a corn field. Cristhian Rivera has
been charged with first-degree murder.
I can guess that the best of humanity was on display at the
funeral. As the above picture shows cars jammed the streets of
Brooklyn as people attended the funeral. In reading about the
funeral on a number of web sites I read that her father, Rob, asked that the
community turn toward life. He did this by recognizing a couple at the funeral
who had just been married. And he said this:
“And, today it’s time to turn the page,” he
said. “We’re at the end of a long ordeal, but now we need to turn toward life.
We need to heal — this community needs to heal, our family needs to heal, but
the problem with that is the person best equipped to help us through this is
Mollie. So, let’s try to do what Mollie would do. Let’s say what Mollie would
say. Let’s start with baby steps.”
The article in the Brooklyn, Iowa newspaper
describing the funeral is:
Because Cristhian Rivera is reportedly an
illegal immigrant, Mollie’s death has raised the issue of the crime rate among
illegal immigrants. The Trump Administration and President Trump
have already taken Mollie’s death and fit it into their
narrative. It’s a similar narrative to which President Trump communicated on his very first
speech as a candidate for President when he said that ”They’re [people from
Mexico] bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re
rapists.”
It is important to know that much research shows that illegal immigrants do not
increase crime rates. According to a 2017 Cato Institute policy
document, policy document, immigrants do not increase local crime rates and are
less likely to cause crime than their native-born peers. The
document went on to say that those who are citizens are more likely to be
incarcerated than immigrants. The Cato
Institute is a libertarian think tank.
The policy document can be found here:
A recent study done by the University of California-Irving (UCI)
found that immigration actually lowers the crime rate. Charis
Kubrin, UCI professor of criminology said, “So many of the current executive
orders and policies are based on this idea that immigration causes crime:
building the border wall, adding thousands of Border Patrol officers. But that
narrative is simply false. Overall, immigration does not cause crime. In fact,
our analysis reveals that, if anything, immigration causes a drop in crime.” Kubrin’s quote is on a University of
California Irvine web site:
The tragedy in Brooklyn Iowa is that a bright, young woman is
dead, and a family and community are grieving. Her tragic death
should not be used to advance a narrative that research doesn’t support. That does not advance healing.
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