Seems like an extremely poor post, which is a shame.
At a minimum you should have referenced the US to compare - for the past hundred+ years, immigrants both legal and illegal have been UNDERrepresented in incarceration statistics
Back to Europe specifically, or more generally, a review of immigration and crime in the OECD. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.38.1.181 - No correlation of immigration and crime (where they use homicide as a proxy for crime overall)
I'll quote the paper
>The frequent overrepresentation of incarcerated immigrants relative to overall
population, depicted in Figure 3, might be due to two measurement issues quite
specific to immigration-crime statistics. One is that irregular aliens (that is, those
not officially registered by the appropriate process in that nation) would be counted
in the share of immigrants in the prison population, but not in the share of immigrants in the resident population. The other is the potential harsher treatment of
foreigners by the police and the judiciary system due to discrimination or unequal
access to legal services and noncustodial measures, such as bail or home-detention.
Alone, not enough to explain it all, as they say, but then add in the adjustments by age, education, income, etc and I think you're getting somewhere.
More importantly, you didn't discuss integration or potential biased enforcement of laws at all in your post. Which is a glaring oversight.
I haven't looked it up, but I'd assume the graph which plots "Muslim majority" countries as distinct from "liberal democracies" is from some anti immigration group, because otherwise that's some whacky categorization and should have been an immediate red flag for you
I believe you're too willing to accept "crime isn't about money" too - a small study where people are given a few hundred dollars is not something that people can plan their lives around nor, would I think, likely to stop a criminal from committing crimes. You're accepting something as evidence when it's barely telling us anything, let alone about why people commit crimes or end up living a life of crime
Here's a section of the above OECD paper
>A different policy experiment in Italy involves the online procedure used to
award work permits. Prospective employers of immigrant workers must send an
electronic application on given “Click Days,” starting at 8 AM, and such applications
are processed on a first come–first served basis until available quotas of permits are
exhausted. Exploiting discontinuities in “click time” to compare those just eligible
for work permits to those not eligible, Pinotti (2017) finds that those eligible to
work are significantly less likely to be arrested during the following year. The size
of the effect is very large and remarkably similar, in relative terms, to that estimated
by Mastrobuoni and Pinotti (2015)—a drop of more than 50 percent relative to the
baseline crime rate—in spite of the fact that the two papers focus on very different
populations; that is, former prison inmates and applicants for work permits.
As it turns out, when people want to but can't work, they have no other option than to steal or starve. The EU is full of countries that make it harder than necessary to work as an immigrant, or hell just make it hard to work in general.
And while I'm at it some more sources that you might like
Immigrants in Portugal net contributed to the state 5:1, or in other words, 5 euros paid per euro taken in benefits
Really just a very poor post on your part, where you seem to uncritically repost stuff you see floating around on twitter or whatever and don't look into any of the actual research or even give lip service to questioning the source or how reliable it is. If this is what I can expect from you I don't know why I should stay subbed
These articles are very long, so I need to cut them somewhere. Some of the points you mention are addressed in the next article, so I won't discuss them here. I'll discuss the rest.
Your paper: Thanks for sharing, I looked at it. It's interesting.
I've read enough of them now that I have a good sense of where the biases or shortcomings might lie. In yours, I'll start with the criticisms, and then where they (and you) are right:
1. They use murder and theft. These are 2 types of crimes that have gone down over the last few decades. In the case of theft, it continues going down. Murder has seen a recent uptick (not shown here). The types of crime that have gone through the roof are fraud, and most importantly, rape and sexual assault. If you follow a source of news that does report on these types of crimes from immigrants (many don't), you'll see that the near universal worry is rape.
2. The paper mentions the issue of data normalization across countries, and that's why they go for murder rate (the more normalized type of crime statistic). Instead, a better approach is to look at what's happening in each country (as each country has their method). This is what allowed me to look at different types of crimes.
3. They use correlations instead of causations. They criticize that approach, and then go on and use it again, except now with more granularity! It's better than at national level, but it's still problematic, especially given the next point
4. Some types of crime in Europe are going down, because the native population's crimes are going down. This is due to 2 effects:
a. People are growing older, and older ppl commit less crime, as you, the paper, and I mention
b. Controlling for demographic/social/educational/economic data, natives are committing less crime
So it's perfectly consistent to have overall crime going down with immigration, and yet have immigrants commit much more crime than the average native.
5. Note that something similar also explains part of the difference with the US. The baseline of crime in the US is much higher than in Europe, so what seems like unconventional crime levels in the US from immigrants (ie, lower than US baseline) can also be much higher than EU baseline,.
6. They bundle all immigrants in one group, which misses the composition effect. The EU has lots of immigration from other EU countries which has very low levels of criminality. If you mix Swedes and Germans with Afghans and Somalians, you might not see a crime trend that does exist. This is what they're doing.
data by nationality or culture, which is precisely what you need to be doing to underst
7. The one cut they make is that asylum seekers do commit more crime than economic workers. They attribute this only to the ability to work, but a more accurate appraisal of the situation is that asylum seekers have lots of confounding factors: one, indeed, is lack of work options (early on). Others are education, conflict in the country of origin, culture, religion, wealth, education... All matter.
The Muslim vs liberal democracies graphs are mine, as I believe is written on them. Why is it a whacky categorization?
You're right that the paper around crime and money correlation is not enough evidence to rule it out completely. It should, however, update your prior.
Thank you for sharing the Portugal data, I was looking for something like this. I'll dive into it. Notice that Portugal barely gets Muslim immigration...
Now, for where you're right, which is the most fundamental point: Of course, all crime is not about the religious origin. There are many factors that contribute to crime, some more than others. What we're trying to do here, without saying it, is quantifying the factors. Eg (I'm making these up):
The fact that you're an immigrant: 5%
Age and gender: 17%
Education & intelligence: 15%
Wealth of the country of origin: 3%
Crime in the country of origin, controlled for other variables: 10%
Religion: 5%
Other factors of the home country: 12%
Work permit: 14%
Segregation in the host country: 7%
Tolerance for crime in the host country: 12%
What you're doing here is say: Look! There are some factors that are not religion or country of origin! And I agree. I make that more explicit in the next article, maybe it was a poor choice to not include it here. I'll make sure to make it clear in the next article.
But the other thing you seem to imply with your comment is: The only factors that matter are independent from the country and culture of origin. And I think that's not what data says.
You accuse the post to be extremely poor, and me of uncritically reposting stuff you see floating around on twitter or whatever and don't look into any of the actual research. You then add three data points that are perfectly consistent with everything I said. You also do that instead of looking into the data that I do share. It sounds to me like the message of the article was painful to you, and you tried to look at evidence that would confirm your priors instead. I understand. It's very human. But the truth sometimes is painful. That doesn't make it any less true.
The good news is that we can actually solve a lot of these issues. That's what I attempt in the next article. LMK if you think it was achieved.
If you notice, he avoids dealing with US immigration in detail, other than to try and imply/claim that US statistics are irrelevant because most Muslim immigrants are more educated in the US. Yet Minnesota has more Somali immigrants than any other US state, and its crime rate is low. And they were not all PhDs.
Compared to the people Trump pardoned and still pardons? Or compared to Operation Minnesota Siege itself?
"Operation Metro Surge", which state Republicans Tom Emmer, Lisa Demuth, Joe Marble and others created with the help of fraudulent video maker Nick Shirley, has to date cost Minnesota 10,000 lost jobs, two lost lives (Renee Good's and Alex Pretti's) and $854 million in lost business revenue and wages, none of which will be recovered, because the Minnesota Republican legislators are blocking Minnesota Democratic efforts to make the businesses whole. Feeding Our Future, the biggest of the actual fraud cases to go to court, cost at $250 million less than a third of that, a lot of the money (at least $45 million) was recovered, and no one was shot to death by ICE and CBP's mall cop rejects as a result of it.
Trump pardoned Philip Esformes who stole $1.3 billion from Medicare. But he's white, so you're OK with that.
As for Feeding Our Future: the ringleader was a white woman.
Did you notice that even JD Vance had to back off the "billions" bullocks in last week's press conference? In fact Joe Thompson, the guy who last year started the Billions lie you are still in love with, is no longer defending that lie on behalf of the Trump administration. Not after it was used to kill Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Thompson's slumbering conscience got woke, literally, and he not only quit the US Attorney’s office, he's now working as one of Don Lemon's defense attorneys in the Cities Church case.
I'm not okay with pardoning Esformes; also, it has nothing to do with his race, but feel free to make all the assumptions you want. Same with Aimee Bock.
Where did you get that I am in love with a lie about "billions?" And someone used those "billions" to kill Good and Pretti?
I guess you're ok with people disrupting and terrorizing religious services--see how this works?
Great info. Yes unfortunately it seems like this Substack is off the deep end. The other comments on this post referencing the "crusades" and so forth are a good indication...
Given the numbers you outlined and the way it feels on the streets, I am beginning to think that maybe those calling to keep Muslim immigrants from war torn countries out, might have a point. Especially men of soldiering age.
This is about religious politics that go all the way back to crusades, isn't it?
Given the facts you presented it is hard not to question my liberal attitudes to others.
This is an extraordinarily difficult subject to write about honestly, especially about/ in Europe, so credit for attempting it seriously and with data rather than slogans.
One thing that stands out to me is how quickly discussion of immigration, integration, crime, or social cohesion can collapse into moral labeling. You can already see in some of the comments that simply raising concerns risks someone being branded “far right” or racist. That’s dangerous for democratic discourse. If every mainstream person who talks about visible integration problems is treated as morally illegitimate, eventually only actual extremists will be willing to discuss them publicly.
The problem is also complicated by the gap between reality and social media amplification. Many Europeans clearly do encounter real issues around integration, public order, parallel communities, or cultural tension in everyday life. But online discourse then extrapolates those realities into sweeping civilizational panic. Both denial and hysteria distort the picture.
I suspect this dynamic partly explains the rise of parties like AfD in Germany and similar movements elsewhere. A lot of voters may not necessarily be ideological extremists; they may simply feel that established parties refuse to acknowledge obvious tensions.
What makes the situation especially hard is that Europe doesn’t appear politically capable of either a truly hardline right wing solution or an expansive, expensive, long-term integration-heavy left wing solution. So the most likely outcome is probably what Europe often does best: muddling through incrementally, imperfectly, and unevenly.
The labeling is not ideal. I try my best to be as neutral as possible, but you see the result.
I think it's just human nature, I just accept it as a cost of doing business. But yes, I do believe that's why right-wing parties in Europe are growing, which is something that worries me too. I don't think ideas like "We should leave the EU", "Russia is good", or "We should kick out all immigrants" are good. They're dangerous. But if the left doesn't listen to this type of concern, the right will keep winning.
Note that the Danish left party did adopt some tougher immigration policies. So it's doable.
The numbers don't lie, and the story they tell is that our western sensibilities in Europe and the USA were caused by what Professor Gil Saad describes as the West's suicidal empathy. He has just written a book with the same title that I would urge those that wonder how we got here should read...truly a remarkable book.
As always, nothing is ever perfectly cut and dry, but a huge component of what has caused these problems in the West is the empathy shown towards the many that take advantage of the privilege and the many who are unwilling to adopt the culture of the West.
I am reminded of the Japanese legend that says....
If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station, as the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.
I believe it fits the dilemma the West now has to grapple with.
This shows that the problem is European specific, though. It's basically fine in North America.
For the record, as a North American immigrant to Europe, the above fits with casual observation. There's something about the European method that's going particularly poorly.
You will get a lot of criticism for this post from the Left despite simply stating facts. I am left leaning for what it's worth but the data evidence is undeniable.
Ingesting immigrants of such a radically different way of life is detrimental to Anglosphere countries. The Right is not rising because they are fooling the public, they are rising because the Public sees with their own eyes what is happening to their towns and cities.
And that doesn't mean you are racist to say that. It means you are logical and follow the evidence, which you would assume the Left would appreciate, but I guess they don't.
Regarding Swedes committing murders in Germany: I’m Swedish and can weigh in.
Sweden has had a tough couple of decades, with organized crime on the rise. This has obviously been connected to migration, largely from the MENA region. Sweden has experienced high rates of shootings, arson, and bombings connected to immigrant criminal gangs. Clans, drug trafficking, and infiltration of institutions have become the new normal.
These highly entrepreneurial criminals with migrant backgrounds (see, for example, Rawa Majid, “The Kurdish Fox” of the Foxtrot gang) are often Swedish citizens due to historically lax migration policies and an extremely low bar for obtaining citizenship.
Many of these “Swedish” criminals are making their mark across Europe, committing crimes in Denmark, Norway, Spain (e.g. Shottaz), the Balkans, and obviously Germany.
Policies are changing (as you say, more slowly than public opinion), but there is still an excess population of “Swedes” growing up in segregated areas where gangs, clans, and Islamists are far more present than Swedish authorities or Swedish cultural norms.
So if Swedes are committing crimes in other European countries, my guess is that the average Swede would view these individuals as immigrants. More often than not, they do not seem to identify with Swedish culture, do not speak intelligible Swedish, and are Swedish in only the most formal sense.
Some sources would be Lasse Wierups books and Diamant Salihus books, i guess you could ask an AI to summarize them in english or spanish.
Wow, that's a wild set of data. I did a quick look for data for here in Canada, and similar to the US the crime stats reverse. If you want neighbourhood crime to go down _increase_ the number of immigrants. e.g. https://johnhoward.ca/blog/immigration-and-crime/
At a first guess it's the Canadian immigration policy point system which increases the likelihood of solidly employable people, combined with the difficulty of getting here sorting for capability and class. There are regional pockets with problems, but in general everything goes smoothly.
I need to do more research to match against your data sets, but yeah, lots of immigrants in my suburb and it's so peaceful it's boring ;)
The Canadian points system is probably one of the reasons, yes.
If you're going to reseatch Canadian data (I don't have time unfortunately), I'd look at the following:
1. Baseline crime in Canada vs US vs Europe. It's higher in the US vs Europe, and that explains part of why immigrants commit more crime than natives in EU but not US.
2. Correlations vs causations. What you say is a correlation.
3. The points system is indeed super important. I know it has recently been updated. I'm curious what was vs what is. The most important factor there is the share of high skilled vs low skilled vs asylum seekers vs family reunions
To all those who claim this post lacks past or present data analysis from the US, I think it is not the right place to expect them. Clearly, the focus here was Europe, and US data is merely anecdotical.
I find the piece VERY interesting. Thought provoking. What I expect from your posts.
One question Thomas: is there a way to correlate unemployment with crime (a very hard word, legally inadequate), not merely statistically but through data laying out the occupation of “criminals” at the moment of their “crime”?
Tomas, your reporting has become anti-muslim. This article could be straight out of Far-right books of Kubitschek and other people of the 'Great Replacement Theory'. Feel reach out if you might change your intention of reporting. I cannot support this Substack becoming a haven for far-right extremists as you can see from the comments. Feel free to reach out to me.
I am very sad to see this development. But I am not angry.
Thanks for letting me know your thoughts on this in a genuine way.
I can see why you'd think that: "Tomas is sharing all this data that is pointing at Muslims as a group that is committing a lot of crime, is economically costly, and has radical opinions. Therefore, Tomas is anti-Muslim."
There's one key data point in this article that suggests this is not the case: the conclusion. If I were anti-Muslim, I would say "Let's stop Muslim immigration." That's not what I say.
There are two alternative hypotheses you should weigh in your head:
1. Tomas is neither Muslim not anti-Muslim. He is seeing a conflict where two sides are talking past each other, so he looks at the data to see what part of truth do both sides have.
2. Tomas is actually worried about the anti-Muslim sentiment that's brewing and where it's going. He doesn't believe the current discourse is solving the problem, it's only getting it worse. One side denies there are problems with Muslim immigrants, the other blames them for all the immigration problems. This is only leading towards polarization. If nothing is done, right-wing parties are going to win elections across Europe, and then there will be a big reversal and lots of pain in Europe. He is trying to do something about it.
This is what I believe. I hope you can see it in the articles, and even more so in the next ones.
>after a well-documented research writes as a conclusion that "Immigrants are nearly always fiscally expensive", "Immigrants commit substantially more crime than any other group" and "Immigration reduces local trust and social capital"
In European discourse, saying “Europe does not need immigration” immediately places one near the hard identitarian/right-populist camp. By affirming immigration in principle, he signals he is not anti-foreigner,
This is a weird turn from "here are some facts" to "we should not judge"
When countries are "good at taking immigrants" it usually means, the people suffering under the consequences get ignored. Like the victims of sexual assaults.
This data is potentially consistent with what I share.
If 80% of Ireland's population is native, and, say, 10% is from the EU, that would leave ~10% from non-EU.
According to the data you share, 52% of sexual offenses come from partners, ex-partners, friends, acquaintances, and blood relatives. You could assume these crimes are committed by the population evenly.
Then, of the 48% remaining, you could have the vast majority of cases caused by the 10% of non-EU immigrants, and your rate of sexual offenses per person would be dramatically higher for that group than the rest.
The only thing remaining would be to square the "83% of sexual suspects known to the victim" with the 52% I mention above. One way to square it would be that 31% are committed by neighbors, which would potentially include non-EU immgrants.
The point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of these stats are all consistent with each other, but many are cherry-picked to follow the agenda of those publishing them, so you can't trust it at face value. Ireland, AFAIK, has a track record of obfuscating foreign crime btw. That's why I looked at the data myself.
What does that figure have to do with the fact that certain types of immigrants are absurdly overrepresented in sex crimes?
Immigrants are often known to non-immigrant victims. And assuming that figure for Ireland holds true for the countries discussed in the piece, the state still has to expend resources on investigating and prosecuting sex offences committed by immigrants against immigrants, as well as cleaning up the aftermath (eg, providing some level of care to the immigrant victim)
Immigration status is not what causes someone to commit sexual violence. Sexual offences exist in every society, across every ethnicity, nationality and social class.
Reducing the issue to “immigrants” ignores the broader reality of how and where most sexual violence actually happens.
If you want to discuss crime rates among specific demographics, that’s a separate conversation. But it still wouldn’t change the fact that most sexual violence is committed by someone the victim already knows (their partner, family member, friend…)
That's right, immigration status does not cause sexual violence. People from specific countries with specific belief systems and lack of respect for Western values and women are still committing a disproportionate about of these crimes. (BTW many victims are also immigrants) and the systematic denial of these facts only helps extremists.
EU has several solutions to its immigration problem which is primarily caused by lack of cheap workforce:
- choose the immigrant nations proactively or it will be chosen for them. Germans were protesting about working Polish immigrants, ended up pushing them out and workforce gap left has been substituted by Muslim immigrants. The same happened with UK.
- Expand. Take more countries into the block. Or at least sign free labor movement deals. That way you get to choose the nations that will be most cohesive with local culture.
- Ease the regulations for companies to recruit foreign workers from whitelist of countries.
would like to see more data on the US specifically - self selection is everywhere and i’m curious what sorts may be hiding (muslim pakistani-american, grew up in the states, and the muslim folks i know are *far* more educated than my median connection - but that’s possibly community networks. also muslim americans have one of the highest income levels of american groups)
2. Higher average crime rates in the US than in Europe
3. Much bigger country, so harder to be segregated in Muslim areas
4. Less welfare and easier to work, so incentives are more aligned with work vs crime
Unfortunately, the US doesn't gather this type of data AFAIK, so there's much less data to work with. Note that in Europe, the only reason why we have this data is because different countries have different approaches
The body of the article is so focused on dysfunction and risk that the closing “Europe needs immigration” line can read less like the natural conclusion of the evidence and more like a moderating caveat, a credibility signal, or an attempt to remain within acceptable elite discourse boundaries. That doesn’t necessarily make it insincere. It may simply reflect the tension many European conservatives now hold simultaneously
I'm shocked. After all that data you conclude that "massive waves of deportation should not occur". Immigrant behavior doesn't converge to local performance. Three generations of Danish data demonstrate that. What more do you require to conclude that immigrants are detrimental to a thriving Europe?
Seems like an extremely poor post, which is a shame.
At a minimum you should have referenced the US to compare - for the past hundred+ years, immigrants both legal and illegal have been UNDERrepresented in incarceration statistics
https://ranabr.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj26066/files/media/file/immigration_incarceration_jan2024.pdf
The US comparison for welfare usage - immigrants use far less welfare than native born https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-use-less-welfare-native-born-americans
Back to Europe specifically, or more generally, a review of immigration and crime in the OECD. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.38.1.181 - No correlation of immigration and crime (where they use homicide as a proxy for crime overall)
I'll quote the paper
>The frequent overrepresentation of incarcerated immigrants relative to overall
population, depicted in Figure 3, might be due to two measurement issues quite
specific to immigration-crime statistics. One is that irregular aliens (that is, those
not officially registered by the appropriate process in that nation) would be counted
in the share of immigrants in the prison population, but not in the share of immigrants in the resident population. The other is the potential harsher treatment of
foreigners by the police and the judiciary system due to discrimination or unequal
access to legal services and noncustodial measures, such as bail or home-detention.
Alone, not enough to explain it all, as they say, but then add in the adjustments by age, education, income, etc and I think you're getting somewhere.
More importantly, you didn't discuss integration or potential biased enforcement of laws at all in your post. Which is a glaring oversight.
I haven't looked it up, but I'd assume the graph which plots "Muslim majority" countries as distinct from "liberal democracies" is from some anti immigration group, because otherwise that's some whacky categorization and should have been an immediate red flag for you
I believe you're too willing to accept "crime isn't about money" too - a small study where people are given a few hundred dollars is not something that people can plan their lives around nor, would I think, likely to stop a criminal from committing crimes. You're accepting something as evidence when it's barely telling us anything, let alone about why people commit crimes or end up living a life of crime
Here's a section of the above OECD paper
>A different policy experiment in Italy involves the online procedure used to
award work permits. Prospective employers of immigrant workers must send an
electronic application on given “Click Days,” starting at 8 AM, and such applications
are processed on a first come–first served basis until available quotas of permits are
exhausted. Exploiting discontinuities in “click time” to compare those just eligible
for work permits to those not eligible, Pinotti (2017) finds that those eligible to
work are significantly less likely to be arrested during the following year. The size
of the effect is very large and remarkably similar, in relative terms, to that estimated
by Mastrobuoni and Pinotti (2015)—a drop of more than 50 percent relative to the
baseline crime rate—in spite of the fact that the two papers focus on very different
populations; that is, former prison inmates and applicants for work permits.
As it turns out, when people want to but can't work, they have no other option than to steal or starve. The EU is full of countries that make it harder than necessary to work as an immigrant, or hell just make it hard to work in general.
And while I'm at it some more sources that you might like
Immigrants in Portugal net contributed to the state 5:1, or in other words, 5 euros paid per euro taken in benefits
https://joaonevesanalytics.substack.com/p/contributory-impact-of-migrants-in#:~:text=2024%3A%20Preliminary%20data%20show%20another,contributions%20in%202024%20rr.pt.
And another for Portugal, areas with more immigrants as a share of population have lower crime rates https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/news/portugal-municipalities-more-immigrants-see-less-crime-2024-10-17_en
Really just a very poor post on your part, where you seem to uncritically repost stuff you see floating around on twitter or whatever and don't look into any of the actual research or even give lip service to questioning the source or how reliable it is. If this is what I can expect from you I don't know why I should stay subbed
Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
These articles are very long, so I need to cut them somewhere. Some of the points you mention are addressed in the next article, so I won't discuss them here. I'll discuss the rest.
Your paper: Thanks for sharing, I looked at it. It's interesting.
I've read enough of them now that I have a good sense of where the biases or shortcomings might lie. In yours, I'll start with the criticisms, and then where they (and you) are right:
1. They use murder and theft. These are 2 types of crimes that have gone down over the last few decades. In the case of theft, it continues going down. Murder has seen a recent uptick (not shown here). The types of crime that have gone through the roof are fraud, and most importantly, rape and sexual assault. If you follow a source of news that does report on these types of crimes from immigrants (many don't), you'll see that the near universal worry is rape.
2. The paper mentions the issue of data normalization across countries, and that's why they go for murder rate (the more normalized type of crime statistic). Instead, a better approach is to look at what's happening in each country (as each country has their method). This is what allowed me to look at different types of crimes.
3. They use correlations instead of causations. They criticize that approach, and then go on and use it again, except now with more granularity! It's better than at national level, but it's still problematic, especially given the next point
4. Some types of crime in Europe are going down, because the native population's crimes are going down. This is due to 2 effects:
a. People are growing older, and older ppl commit less crime, as you, the paper, and I mention
b. Controlling for demographic/social/educational/economic data, natives are committing less crime
So it's perfectly consistent to have overall crime going down with immigration, and yet have immigrants commit much more crime than the average native.
5. Note that something similar also explains part of the difference with the US. The baseline of crime in the US is much higher than in Europe, so what seems like unconventional crime levels in the US from immigrants (ie, lower than US baseline) can also be much higher than EU baseline,.
6. They bundle all immigrants in one group, which misses the composition effect. The EU has lots of immigration from other EU countries which has very low levels of criminality. If you mix Swedes and Germans with Afghans and Somalians, you might not see a crime trend that does exist. This is what they're doing.
data by nationality or culture, which is precisely what you need to be doing to underst
7. The one cut they make is that asylum seekers do commit more crime than economic workers. They attribute this only to the ability to work, but a more accurate appraisal of the situation is that asylum seekers have lots of confounding factors: one, indeed, is lack of work options (early on). Others are education, conflict in the country of origin, culture, religion, wealth, education... All matter.
The Muslim vs liberal democracies graphs are mine, as I believe is written on them. Why is it a whacky categorization?
You're right that the paper around crime and money correlation is not enough evidence to rule it out completely. It should, however, update your prior.
Thank you for sharing the Portugal data, I was looking for something like this. I'll dive into it. Notice that Portugal barely gets Muslim immigration...
Now, for where you're right, which is the most fundamental point: Of course, all crime is not about the religious origin. There are many factors that contribute to crime, some more than others. What we're trying to do here, without saying it, is quantifying the factors. Eg (I'm making these up):
The fact that you're an immigrant: 5%
Age and gender: 17%
Education & intelligence: 15%
Wealth of the country of origin: 3%
Crime in the country of origin, controlled for other variables: 10%
Religion: 5%
Other factors of the home country: 12%
Work permit: 14%
Segregation in the host country: 7%
Tolerance for crime in the host country: 12%
What you're doing here is say: Look! There are some factors that are not religion or country of origin! And I agree. I make that more explicit in the next article, maybe it was a poor choice to not include it here. I'll make sure to make it clear in the next article.
But the other thing you seem to imply with your comment is: The only factors that matter are independent from the country and culture of origin. And I think that's not what data says.
You accuse the post to be extremely poor, and me of uncritically reposting stuff you see floating around on twitter or whatever and don't look into any of the actual research. You then add three data points that are perfectly consistent with everything I said. You also do that instead of looking into the data that I do share. It sounds to me like the message of the article was painful to you, and you tried to look at evidence that would confirm your priors instead. I understand. It's very human. But the truth sometimes is painful. That doesn't make it any less true.
The good news is that we can actually solve a lot of these issues. That's what I attempt in the next article. LMK if you think it was achieved.
He's posting whatever fits his prior bigotries.
If you notice, he avoids dealing with US immigration in detail, other than to try and imply/claim that US statistics are irrelevant because most Muslim immigrants are more educated in the US. Yet Minnesota has more Somali immigrants than any other US state, and its crime rate is low. And they were not all PhDs.
Their fraud rate seems a tiny bit high, no?
Compared to the people Trump pardoned and still pardons? Or compared to Operation Minnesota Siege itself?
"Operation Metro Surge", which state Republicans Tom Emmer, Lisa Demuth, Joe Marble and others created with the help of fraudulent video maker Nick Shirley, has to date cost Minnesota 10,000 lost jobs, two lost lives (Renee Good's and Alex Pretti's) and $854 million in lost business revenue and wages, none of which will be recovered, because the Minnesota Republican legislators are blocking Minnesota Democratic efforts to make the businesses whole. Feeding Our Future, the biggest of the actual fraud cases to go to court, cost at $250 million less than a third of that, a lot of the money (at least $45 million) was recovered, and no one was shot to death by ICE and CBP's mall cop rejects as a result of it.
https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/04/23/report-operation-metro-surge-cost-minnesota-thousands-of-jobs-in-hospitality-construction/
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/04/21/workers-lose-240-million-during-ice-surge-survey-estimates
You can have both things be true: A Somalian diaspora committing high level of crimes, and a criminal president.
$854 million is bad and still standard deviations below the amount of fraud committed by Minnesota Somalians.
"But trump..."
Why is Nick Shirley "fraudulent?" Seems he was pretty on the mark with that "learing center."
Not sure what the deaths of the two ICE protestors have to do with this topic.
What are the 854 million in lost revenues due to?
Also "Feeding our Future only cost taxpayers $250 million" is probably not the flex you think it is.
Trump pardoned Philip Esformes who stole $1.3 billion from Medicare. But he's white, so you're OK with that.
As for Feeding Our Future: the ringleader was a white woman.
Did you notice that even JD Vance had to back off the "billions" bullocks in last week's press conference? In fact Joe Thompson, the guy who last year started the Billions lie you are still in love with, is no longer defending that lie on behalf of the Trump administration. Not after it was used to kill Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Thompson's slumbering conscience got woke, literally, and he not only quit the US Attorney’s office, he's now working as one of Don Lemon's defense attorneys in the Cities Church case.
I'm not okay with pardoning Esformes; also, it has nothing to do with his race, but feel free to make all the assumptions you want. Same with Aimee Bock.
Where did you get that I am in love with a lie about "billions?" And someone used those "billions" to kill Good and Pretti?
I guess you're ok with people disrupting and terrorizing religious services--see how this works?
Hi, I think this explains the US data. I'll go deeper in the next article too.
https://unchartedterritories.substack.com/p/the-criminal-socialm-and-economic?r=36xnz&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=266444471
Thank you Garrett for a well thought out response. These blanket statements about 'immigrants' leave a bad taste of underlying bigotry.
Great info. Yes unfortunately it seems like this Substack is off the deep end. The other comments on this post referencing the "crusades" and so forth are a good indication...
ICYMI
https://unchartedterritories.substack.com/p/the-criminal-socialm-and-economic?r=36xnz&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=266444471
Yes anyone who questions the "advantages" of massive waves of immigrations from MENA is off the deep end. Spot on, mate!
Why do you think Europe needs immigrants?
Given the numbers you outlined and the way it feels on the streets, I am beginning to think that maybe those calling to keep Muslim immigrants from war torn countries out, might have a point. Especially men of soldiering age.
This is about religious politics that go all the way back to crusades, isn't it?
Given the facts you presented it is hard not to question my liberal attitudes to others.
Yeah, the point at which I cut the article is maybe not ideal. It was getting too long. I'll answer these in the next article
You presented a mountain of data showing that migration into Europe of the third world is an unalloyed disaster.
Then you conclude that it's actually good and necessary. One can only surmise that conclusion is based on a hatred of Europe and its peoples.
This is an extraordinarily difficult subject to write about honestly, especially about/ in Europe, so credit for attempting it seriously and with data rather than slogans.
One thing that stands out to me is how quickly discussion of immigration, integration, crime, or social cohesion can collapse into moral labeling. You can already see in some of the comments that simply raising concerns risks someone being branded “far right” or racist. That’s dangerous for democratic discourse. If every mainstream person who talks about visible integration problems is treated as morally illegitimate, eventually only actual extremists will be willing to discuss them publicly.
The problem is also complicated by the gap between reality and social media amplification. Many Europeans clearly do encounter real issues around integration, public order, parallel communities, or cultural tension in everyday life. But online discourse then extrapolates those realities into sweeping civilizational panic. Both denial and hysteria distort the picture.
I suspect this dynamic partly explains the rise of parties like AfD in Germany and similar movements elsewhere. A lot of voters may not necessarily be ideological extremists; they may simply feel that established parties refuse to acknowledge obvious tensions.
What makes the situation especially hard is that Europe doesn’t appear politically capable of either a truly hardline right wing solution or an expansive, expensive, long-term integration-heavy left wing solution. So the most likely outcome is probably what Europe often does best: muddling through incrementally, imperfectly, and unevenly.
The labeling is not ideal. I try my best to be as neutral as possible, but you see the result.
I think it's just human nature, I just accept it as a cost of doing business. But yes, I do believe that's why right-wing parties in Europe are growing, which is something that worries me too. I don't think ideas like "We should leave the EU", "Russia is good", or "We should kick out all immigrants" are good. They're dangerous. But if the left doesn't listen to this type of concern, the right will keep winning.
Note that the Danish left party did adopt some tougher immigration policies. So it's doable.
Garrett in this very thread has already debunked the post:
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-criminal-socialm-and-economic/comment/265526591
https://unchartedterritories.substack.com/p/the-criminal-socialm-and-economic?r=36xnz&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=266444471
The numbers don't lie, and the story they tell is that our western sensibilities in Europe and the USA were caused by what Professor Gil Saad describes as the West's suicidal empathy. He has just written a book with the same title that I would urge those that wonder how we got here should read...truly a remarkable book.
As always, nothing is ever perfectly cut and dry, but a huge component of what has caused these problems in the West is the empathy shown towards the many that take advantage of the privilege and the many who are unwilling to adopt the culture of the West.
I am reminded of the Japanese legend that says....
If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station, as the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.
I believe it fits the dilemma the West now has to grapple with.
Love the train metaphor
This shows that the problem is European specific, though. It's basically fine in North America.
For the record, as a North American immigrant to Europe, the above fits with casual observation. There's something about the European method that's going particularly poorly.
You will get a lot of criticism for this post from the Left despite simply stating facts. I am left leaning for what it's worth but the data evidence is undeniable.
Ingesting immigrants of such a radically different way of life is detrimental to Anglosphere countries. The Right is not rising because they are fooling the public, they are rising because the Public sees with their own eyes what is happening to their towns and cities.
And that doesn't mean you are racist to say that. It means you are logical and follow the evidence, which you would assume the Left would appreciate, but I guess they don't.
Thank you.
To be clear, I believe all of this is solvable through policy, and the policies should not be "kick out the immigrants" or "Don't accept any Muslims".
But you can only solve the problems you understand, even if the data is painful or against your beliefs.
Wise words.
Regarding Swedes committing murders in Germany: I’m Swedish and can weigh in.
Sweden has had a tough couple of decades, with organized crime on the rise. This has obviously been connected to migration, largely from the MENA region. Sweden has experienced high rates of shootings, arson, and bombings connected to immigrant criminal gangs. Clans, drug trafficking, and infiltration of institutions have become the new normal.
These highly entrepreneurial criminals with migrant backgrounds (see, for example, Rawa Majid, “The Kurdish Fox” of the Foxtrot gang) are often Swedish citizens due to historically lax migration policies and an extremely low bar for obtaining citizenship.
Many of these “Swedish” criminals are making their mark across Europe, committing crimes in Denmark, Norway, Spain (e.g. Shottaz), the Balkans, and obviously Germany.
Policies are changing (as you say, more slowly than public opinion), but there is still an excess population of “Swedes” growing up in segregated areas where gangs, clans, and Islamists are far more present than Swedish authorities or Swedish cultural norms.
So if Swedes are committing crimes in other European countries, my guess is that the average Swede would view these individuals as immigrants. More often than not, they do not seem to identify with Swedish culture, do not speak intelligible Swedish, and are Swedish in only the most formal sense.
Some sources would be Lasse Wierups books and Diamant Salihus books, i guess you could ask an AI to summarize them in english or spanish.
That is consistent with what I have read, thanks for sharing.
Wow, that's a wild set of data. I did a quick look for data for here in Canada, and similar to the US the crime stats reverse. If you want neighbourhood crime to go down _increase_ the number of immigrants. e.g. https://johnhoward.ca/blog/immigration-and-crime/
At a first guess it's the Canadian immigration policy point system which increases the likelihood of solidly employable people, combined with the difficulty of getting here sorting for capability and class. There are regional pockets with problems, but in general everything goes smoothly.
I need to do more research to match against your data sets, but yeah, lots of immigrants in my suburb and it's so peaceful it's boring ;)
The Canadian points system is probably one of the reasons, yes.
If you're going to reseatch Canadian data (I don't have time unfortunately), I'd look at the following:
1. Baseline crime in Canada vs US vs Europe. It's higher in the US vs Europe, and that explains part of why immigrants commit more crime than natives in EU but not US.
2. Correlations vs causations. What you say is a correlation.
3. The points system is indeed super important. I know it has recently been updated. I'm curious what was vs what is. The most important factor there is the share of high skilled vs low skilled vs asylum seekers vs family reunions
To all those who claim this post lacks past or present data analysis from the US, I think it is not the right place to expect them. Clearly, the focus here was Europe, and US data is merely anecdotical.
I find the piece VERY interesting. Thought provoking. What I expect from your posts.
One question Thomas: is there a way to correlate unemployment with crime (a very hard word, legally inadequate), not merely statistically but through data laying out the occupation of “criminals” at the moment of their “crime”?
Yes, there is. Garrett mentions it above:
>A different policy experiment in Italy involves the online procedure used to
award work permits. Prospective employers of immigrant workers must send an
electronic application on given “Click Days,” starting at 8 AM, and such applications
are processed on a first come–first served basis until available quotas of permits are
exhausted. Exploiting discontinuities in “click time” to compare those just eligible
for work permits to those not eligible, Pinotti (2017) finds that those eligible to
work are significantly less likely to be arrested during the following year. The size
of the effect is very large and remarkably similar, in relative terms, to that estimated
by Mastrobuoni and Pinotti (2015)—a drop of more than 50 percent relative to the
baseline crime rate—in spite of the fact that the two papers focus on very different
populations; that is, former prison inmates and applicants for work permits.
Tomas, your reporting has become anti-muslim. This article could be straight out of Far-right books of Kubitschek and other people of the 'Great Replacement Theory'. Feel reach out if you might change your intention of reporting. I cannot support this Substack becoming a haven for far-right extremists as you can see from the comments. Feel free to reach out to me.
I am very sad to see this development. But I am not angry.
Thanks for letting me know your thoughts on this in a genuine way.
I can see why you'd think that: "Tomas is sharing all this data that is pointing at Muslims as a group that is committing a lot of crime, is economically costly, and has radical opinions. Therefore, Tomas is anti-Muslim."
There's one key data point in this article that suggests this is not the case: the conclusion. If I were anti-Muslim, I would say "Let's stop Muslim immigration." That's not what I say.
There are two alternative hypotheses you should weigh in your head:
1. Tomas is neither Muslim not anti-Muslim. He is seeing a conflict where two sides are talking past each other, so he looks at the data to see what part of truth do both sides have.
2. Tomas is actually worried about the anti-Muslim sentiment that's brewing and where it's going. He doesn't believe the current discourse is solving the problem, it's only getting it worse. One side denies there are problems with Muslim immigrants, the other blames them for all the immigration problems. This is only leading towards polarization. If nothing is done, right-wing parties are going to win elections across Europe, and then there will be a big reversal and lots of pain in Europe. He is trying to do something about it.
This is what I believe. I hope you can see it in the articles, and even more so in the next ones.
>after a well-documented research writes as a conclusion that "Immigrants are nearly always fiscally expensive", "Immigrants commit substantially more crime than any other group" and "Immigration reduces local trust and social capital"
> proceeds writing "Europe needs immigrants"
Bro are you ok?
Yes, this is counterintuitive. I'll share why in the next article
In European discourse, saying “Europe does not need immigration” immediately places one near the hard identitarian/right-populist camp. By affirming immigration in principle, he signals he is not anti-foreigner,
not ethnonationalist,
and not arguing for total closure
This was not for signaling, but I understand why you though ti
This is a weird turn from "here are some facts" to "we should not judge"
When countries are "good at taking immigrants" it usually means, the people suffering under the consequences get ignored. Like the victims of sexual assaults.
I don't think this is necessarily true, w can discuss in the next article
83% of sexual offence suspects were known to the victim
Why link this issue to immigration?
(source: https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-rvsoaso/relationshipbetweenvictimsandreportedsuspectsforsexualandassaultoffencesq32021-q32022/)
This data is potentially consistent with what I share.
If 80% of Ireland's population is native, and, say, 10% is from the EU, that would leave ~10% from non-EU.
According to the data you share, 52% of sexual offenses come from partners, ex-partners, friends, acquaintances, and blood relatives. You could assume these crimes are committed by the population evenly.
Then, of the 48% remaining, you could have the vast majority of cases caused by the 10% of non-EU immigrants, and your rate of sexual offenses per person would be dramatically higher for that group than the rest.
The only thing remaining would be to square the "83% of sexual suspects known to the victim" with the 52% I mention above. One way to square it would be that 31% are committed by neighbors, which would potentially include non-EU immgrants.
The point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of these stats are all consistent with each other, but many are cherry-picked to follow the agenda of those publishing them, so you can't trust it at face value. Ireland, AFAIK, has a track record of obfuscating foreign crime btw. That's why I looked at the data myself.
What does that figure have to do with the fact that certain types of immigrants are absurdly overrepresented in sex crimes?
Immigrants are often known to non-immigrant victims. And assuming that figure for Ireland holds true for the countries discussed in the piece, the state still has to expend resources on investigating and prosecuting sex offences committed by immigrants against immigrants, as well as cleaning up the aftermath (eg, providing some level of care to the immigrant victim)
Feel free to share the figures and studies you’re referring to, like I did
I will point to the fact that you didn't engage with the ones I shared, yet just shared an additional figure.
And if these suspects are immigrants, sure noone knew them, because they are immigrants and noone native knows any immigrant because they are racist?
Immigration status is not what causes someone to commit sexual violence. Sexual offences exist in every society, across every ethnicity, nationality and social class.
Reducing the issue to “immigrants” ignores the broader reality of how and where most sexual violence actually happens.
If you want to discuss crime rates among specific demographics, that’s a separate conversation. But it still wouldn’t change the fact that most sexual violence is committed by someone the victim already knows (their partner, family member, friend…)
That's right, immigration status does not cause sexual violence. People from specific countries with specific belief systems and lack of respect for Western values and women are still committing a disproportionate about of these crimes. (BTW many victims are also immigrants) and the systematic denial of these facts only helps extremists.
Where is your data? Please link it
You've just read a whole article breaking down the numbers (at least I hope you read it before you cry racism)
EU has several solutions to its immigration problem which is primarily caused by lack of cheap workforce:
- choose the immigrant nations proactively or it will be chosen for them. Germans were protesting about working Polish immigrants, ended up pushing them out and workforce gap left has been substituted by Muslim immigrants. The same happened with UK.
- Expand. Take more countries into the block. Or at least sign free labor movement deals. That way you get to choose the nations that will be most cohesive with local culture.
- Ease the regulations for companies to recruit foreign workers from whitelist of countries.
- Fine
would like to see more data on the US specifically - self selection is everywhere and i’m curious what sorts may be hiding (muslim pakistani-american, grew up in the states, and the muslim folks i know are *far* more educated than my median connection - but that’s possibly community networks. also muslim americans have one of the highest income levels of american groups)
Indeed, I expect several factors here:
1. Self-selection
2. Higher average crime rates in the US than in Europe
3. Much bigger country, so harder to be segregated in Muslim areas
4. Less welfare and easier to work, so incentives are more aligned with work vs crime
Unfortunately, the US doesn't gather this type of data AFAIK, so there's much less data to work with. Note that in Europe, the only reason why we have this data is because different countries have different approaches
Immigrants from Africa/MENA cost much more than they contribute yet we need more? We lose on every item but make it up on the volume?
Yes! Read the next article
The body of the article is so focused on dysfunction and risk that the closing “Europe needs immigration” line can read less like the natural conclusion of the evidence and more like a moderating caveat, a credibility signal, or an attempt to remain within acceptable elite discourse boundaries. That doesn’t necessarily make it insincere. It may simply reflect the tension many European conservatives now hold simultaneously
My conclusion is indeed consistent with signaling, but it's not. See next article!
Modern Western civilization is no match for people's coming from countries where arguments are settled by throwing stones.
I'm shocked. After all that data you conclude that "massive waves of deportation should not occur". Immigrant behavior doesn't converge to local performance. Three generations of Danish data demonstrate that. What more do you require to conclude that immigrants are detrimental to a thriving Europe?
Read the next article!