Yes, that’s right, Trump’s accusation of Mexicans as rapists and drug traffickers is a lie, one more in the long repertoire of falsities that, shamefully, the president of the United Sates keeps spouting. The hateful lies of Trump during his campaign blaming undocumented immigrants for “bringing crime” and damaging the economy are still fresh in the nation’s collective memory.

 Yet, in fact, if only he and the strange band of racists, liars, and greedy crooks that are –feel free to shudder—entrusted with governing us were as honest, transparent and hard working as the immigrants they vilify, the country would breathe much easier.

A just released study by a criminal justice group, The Sentencing Project, confirmed once again something that has been repeatedly proven by a host of previous investigations: “Foreign-born residents of the United States commit crime less often than native-born citizens.” And as a consequence, they are incarcerated at a much lower rate that U.S. born citizens.

“A century of research has shown immigrants do not threaten public safety and, in fact, are less likely to commit crime than native-born citizens,” the study concludes. “False statements about immigrant criminality contribute to unfounded public fears that threaten the safety of immigrants and U.S. citizens.”

Actually, when the number of immigrants goes up, violent crime goes down, as a recent study published in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice shows. 

“The empirical evidence in this study and other related research shows little support for the notion that more immigrants lead to more crime,” said Robert Adelman, a State University of New York at Buffalo professor of sociology who is the study lead author. Furthermore, Adelman added, the study appears to show that for the last quarter of the 20th century and the early portion of the 21st century, the presence of immigrants was consistently associated with drops in violent and property crimes in major U.S. cities.

New York is a case in point. The number of murders in in the country’s biggest city has not only come down dramatically in the past few years, but it keeps shrinking even though the discriminatory “stop and frisk” policy is no longer in place.

Facts, of course, have no bearing on Trump’s words or decisions, but prejudice and political opportunism do. Which is why despite his ridiculous boasting about how great his presidency is, his only real accomplishment has been harassing and terrorizing immigrants, persecuting them and mercilessly tearing families apart by deporting hard working immigrants with no criminal record.  

Yes, definitely forget Trump’s lies and hateful words. Whoever wants to live in a safer city should move to one with a large immigrant population.