Has Bill OReilly Stopped Lying About Arizonas Immigrant Crime Wave?
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has repeatedly cited one reason to support Arizona’s harsh new anti-immigrant law: the state’s exploding crime rate. As FAIR documented in a May 17 Action Alert, there is no such crime wave in the state. What’s more, most research shows that immigrants tend to commit less crime than the population at large. The day after the FAIR alert, O’Reilly (5/18/10) was still at it, declaring that “crime in Arizona is up.” When his guest, Cathy Areu of Catalina magazine, pointed out that the El Paso “is one of the safest cities in the United States”– proof that the presence of immigrants does not increase crime–O’Reilly replied: “That’s a bunch of baloney.” He was wrong. El Paso is regularly ranked as one of the safest cities in the United States (L.A. Times, 5/13/10). In fact, border towns with heavy levels of immigration are among the safest cities in the U.S. (AP, 6/3/10). On May 21, O’Reilly claimed that Arizona is “overrun with crime and everything else and peop
