(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
During a recent radio appearance, Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers claimed that ‘foreigners’ and ‘people that don’t speak English’ are a ‘recipe for criminal activity.’
MICHIGAN—With less than six months until Michigan’s statewide primary election, former US Rep. and Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers is leaning into a white nationalist agenda by claiming that “foreigners” are responsible for increasing rates of crime across the country.
Rogers appeared as a guest last week on the Steve Gruber Show, a conservative talk radio show with 25 affiliate stations in Michigan. And his racist remarks linking “foreigners” to crime were in response to questions that Gruber posed to Rogers about federal immigration policies.
Rogers said:
“You can’t concentrate that many people in one place. They’re foreigners. You have people that don’t speak English. It is a recipe for criminal activity and that’s exactly what we’re finding.”
Rogers isn’t the first opponent of immigration to argue that immigrants drive up crime rates. But research from Stanford University shows that first-generation immigrants have not been more likely to be imprisoned for crimes than people born in the United States since at least 1880.
In fact, both contemporary and historical data—including investigations carried out by major government commissions—have shown repeatedly and systematically that immigration actually is associated with lower crime rates, according to the Social Science Research Council.
Rogers, who is among several Republican candidates vying for a chance to run for an open US Senate seat representing Michigan this year, has voiced similar viewpoints in the past.
In another appearance on the Steve Gruber Show earlier this year, Rogers claimed that immigrants “show up and so crime is higher and we know that.” In another interview, he also claimed that immigrants were “preying on people who are going to work in the morning.”
Click here to listen to the full interview with Rogers.
READ MORE: Mike Rogers changes tune on Patriot Act amid Senate bid
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