By Ella Nikitin
It’s a pretty simple question: What do you think happens more in Livingston County: A vulnerable road user, such as a bicyclist or a pedestrian being killed on roads in this county, or a homicide committed by an “illegal immigrant”?
This is, of course, a trick question, because while in the 10-year period from 2014-2023, there have been 18 vulnerable road user deaths in our county, according to data from Michigan Traffic Crash Facts, with 5 of them being bicyclist deaths including the Hartland resident killed last year, and the police departments within the borders of Livingston County had 17 homicides reported in the period from 2013-2022. Period.
So unless you’re prepared to tell me that undocumented migrants committed all of these homicides, or that a one-year shift in time-frame really makes that big of a difference, undocumented migrants committing homicide is not as big of a problem in this county as bicyclists and pedestrians being killed by cars.
In addition to the 18 cyclist and pedestrian deaths in the county, there were 43 serious injuries of cyclists and pedestrians and 90 minor injuries. If you expand this out to all car crashes, you get 175 deaths, 765 serious injuries, and 3,006 minor injuries.
With that being said, let’s circle over to the topic of discussion at the Monday, Sept. 10, meeting of the Courts, Public Safety, and Infrastructure Development committee of the Livingston County Board of Commissioners, which is this resolution by Wes fearmongering about undocumented migrants, which aims to “document contacts with illegal immigrants regardless of the nature of the contact, and provide periodic reports of these contacts to the Board of Commissioners.”
The real unhinged part of this resolution is the part where Wes attempts to justify why this is even necessary. There are so many problems with the assertions made, I don’t even know where to begin.
The thing that irks me the most is the way that Wes tries to compare sanctuary communities to non-sanctuary communities — not by looking at all communities, but by cherry-picking the ones that best fit his view. He compares the safety rating of Livingston County against “those of the neighboring counties of Washtenaw (D+) and Ingham (D-).” and then immediately attempts to blame the difference on their being sanctuary communities. Did he forget that Oakland County — which is also a sanctuary county, and is right next to Livingston County — has a much better crime grade than Washtenaw and Ingham counties?
I find it hard to believe that someone who literally got a master’s degree in applied statistics from Oakland University would forget that Oakland County exists.
Heck, if we’re going to be cherry-picking counties to exacerbate the differences between them, let’s turn this around and make an equally cherry-picked, disingenuous, argument: “According to CrimeGrade.org, Kent County, which is a sanctuary county according to the Center for Immigration Studies, is one of the safest counties in Michigan with a Crime Grade of A-. Their crime grade compares favorably to that of neighboring Ionia County (D+), which is not a sanctuary county.”
Please, forgive me. Writing that hurt my soul and made me feel like I’m committing a dirty sin, and I don’t have a master’s degree in applied statistics.
It turns out that by cherry-picking data points just like Wes has from his own data sources, I can draw any conclusion I want. It makes me wonder whether he actually learned anything studying for that degree of his.
The truth is, counting the 10 sanctuary counties (including counting Ingham County as one because Wes did, even though it’s Lansing itself that’s the sanctuary community, not the county), against the 73 other counties, shows no statistically significant difference in the crime grade between them. And even if it did, there are other factors that could be at play, such as poverty rate, income and levels of urbanization, among other things.
Perhaps instead of cherry-picking data points, we should look at published research showing that undocumented workers commit less crime. Or this research published by the Center for Immigration Studies that shows that sanctuary cities do not experience higher crime rates.
So explain to me which “reputable organizations have reported higher crime rates in sanctuary cities/counties” if the very organization he cites in his arguments reported otherwise?
I suppose Wes’s response to this article of mine would be similar to the statement posed by state Sen. Lana Theis a few months ago: “Obviously, every one of those crimes would not have happened within the U.S. if the illegal immigrant had been prohibited from entry or deported prior to the crime.”
It’s a statement that’s technically correct in a very unhelpful way.
Let’s frame it a different way: You could also say “Obviously, every crime committed by someone whose mother would have had an abortion if they had access to one would not have happened if that mother had access to an abortion,” and it would be just as correct. You could also say “Obviously, every crime committed by someone with blue eyes would not have happened if the blue-eyed person had been put in jail or executed prior to the crime,” and it would be just as correct. Do you see how this works? This kind of argument is meaningless because it applies to literally any group of people.
Before I finish, I have to make this really obvious disclaimer, because I know that if I don’t, someone on the right will try to claim that this obviously genocidal “solution” to crime is an actual proposal by me: It’s not. It’s a hypothetical point I’m making to illustrate the problem with the argument being made.
If we’re going to be passing resolutions like this, I suggest a change: Take out all of the fear mongering WHEREASes and replace them with “WHEREAS the Board of Commissioners needs to educate itself on crime statistics,” because if this resolution does anything good it will be to show the board that undocumented immigrants committing crime really isn’t that big of a problem here.
So instead of fear mongering about undocumented workers with misleading, cherry-picked statistics, perhaps the commissioners should consider focusing on the real issues in the county, like all the people being killed and seriously injured on our roadways.
Hartland resident Ella Nikitin is running as a Democrat in November’s General Election against incumbent Republican Wes Nakagiri for the District 4 seat on the Livingston County Board of Commissioners; the district includes Hartland Township and portions of Oceola Township.
