On Saturday, Trump referred to what seemed to be an alleged terror attack in Sweden the day before. He talked about the U.S. Migration Ban and justified it by mentioning an “incident” in Sweden. But nothing remarkable happened in Sweden that Friday (I am from Sweden). It is more probable that Trump was talking about a TV segment that aired Friday evening on Tucker Carlson (Fox) about “Muslim Migration” to Sweden and alleged exploding “crime rates” in Sweden.

Fox claims that “Muslims” who migrate to Sweden have increased the crime rate astronomically, and to prove this they interviewed Ami Horowitz. He made a lot of claims about refugees in the short segment while the TV flashed images of Muslims and people rioting. The aim of the claims is to scaremonger; they want to fool people to view immigration as something negative, and dangerous.

I am a Swede that loves the U.S.A. and Ami and Fox News are WRONG!

I will focus on one thing: the claims about crimes in Sweden. When Fox news wants to talk about problems with criminality they often choose Sweden, why not The Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico or the suburbs of New York? (Though they tend to also paint these areas as plagued by a “culture of Black” or “Latino” crime as well)

Sweden surely has problems. Unemployment and alienation among immigrants is a big problem but Sweden is still not as unsafe to live in as the U.S.A.

Lets just look at the statistics that have to do with homicides. Sweden has about 1-1.3 murders per 100,000 inhabitants and the USA has about 5. The U.S. controlled Virgin Islands has 52 murders per 100,000 (56 homicides 2010) and Puerto Rico 18.5 (681 homicides 2014).

Ami Horowitz claims that there are No Go Zones in Sweden where police cannot even enter. No, that is wrong. There are zones with social problems and unemployment among immigrants that RACISTS call No Go Zones. But real “No Go Zones” are the ones found in the USA. Compared to some areas in say Philadelphia and Baltimore (for good reasons such as a history of police brutality and militarization in those places), parts of the racist South, and towns with a legacy of “sundown laws” the Swedish suburbs are VERY calm and peaceful.

Perhaps Ami has never visited the of USA?

Statistics and Swedish rape

It is difficult to compare statistics between countries. Not all nations define crime in the same way. In Sweden and the USA it is, for example, not a crime to be a homosexual. In nations with laws against homosexuals that “crime” affects the statistics.

The best example of this is the international statistics on rape and sexual assault. I have written about this in a recent article. Sweden has tough laws against rape reports and therefore has many reported cases of rapes in its statistics, whereas Egypt and Mozambique have lousy laws and report few or almost no instances of rape.

As “evidence” for this international statistics are cited. Indeed, according to those statistics a lot of rapes are reported in Sweden: 63,5 rape incidents per 100,000 citizens. The USA with 300 million people has 27. That would lead you to think that the numbers of rapes are skyrocketing but then you look at the figures. Sweden with ten million people has 5,960 rapes, Azerbaijan 16, India only 22,000, Lebanon 19, Mozambique 44! And Saudi Arabia claims that there is almost no rape, (and lash the raped women instead), Egypt has about 100 all in all, Canada 576. Does this mean that Sweden is unsafe for women, and that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Mozambique are paradise for women? Of course not, there are big differences between all countries. The first is that what is defined as rape in Mozambique and Saudi Arabia is not the same as in Sweden or Germany and what is legally defined as a rape in USA is not the same as in Sweden. Mozambique still has the old colonial laws that stated rapists to go unpunished if they marry their victims and stay married for at least five years. Saudi Arabia, well… Lots of women are raped but the legal system doesn’t seem to care about that. Egyptian law is not protecting Egyptian women very well. The Swedish law considers lots of acts as sexual assault and rape that other countries don’t.

That is why the statistics on homicides is so important. The international laws against homicide are almost the same in all countries. And the statistics show that Sweden is a far more peaceful country than the USA.

To lower crime rates the U.S.A. should INCREASE immigration

As for immigration.

If Donald Trump wants to decrease the rates of criminality in the USA, he should open the borders and bring in more immigrants. If you look at facts, immigrants to the USA have lower rates of crime than people born in the USA.

Many have reported on this fact which is scientifically and statistically confirmed. The New York Times wrote last year;

“In America, as in Europe, anti-immigrant backlashes have often followed episodes in which foreigners are blamed for crimes and other problems. But statistical studies show that in the United States, at least, immigrants are far more law-abiding than natives, regardless of race, class or education.”

Reason magazine wrote;

“This new study bolsters my reporting on the topic back in 2014 which also found lower rates of criminality among immigrants. As I then noted: University of California sociologist Ruben Rumbaut finds, among other things, that the incarceration rate of American-born males between 18 and 39 years of age was five times the rate of foreign-born males, and finds similar conclusions in a survey of other studies on the topic. Rumbaut and his colleagues have updated their data. From the executive summary of their study: ‘For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. In other words, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not “criminals” by any commonly accepted definition of the term. For this reason, harsh immigration policies are not effective in fighting crime.’”

Lets look at the statistics. I looked at this some years ago and found these excellent charts from one of the studies by Rumbaut. It is statistics that show that 3% of the US population between 18 and 39 was incarcerated in 2000. 3.5% of the U.S. born population and 0.86% of the foreign born population was incarcerated.

Thus: to decrease the crime rates in the U.S.A: increase immigration (and end racist laws and policing practices targeting Black and Brown communities)!

The chart above also shows that the USA has far greater problems with criminality than Sweden. The US has 758 incarcerated per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005-2007. Sweden had 77!

It is interesting to see that Trump watches a show that claims that “Muslim” immigrants are behind crime and rape in Sweden and gets so inspired by it that he attacks Sweden the day after. Islamophobia, anyone?

Edited — Garibaldi (2/19), (2/20)