This VDARE article has a worthwhile discussion, positing an “Immigrant Mass Murder Syndrome” in which foreigners, having trouble adjusting to a new culture, essentially snap.

Searching news archives, the writer concludes:

[O]ur latest tally of the Immigrant Mass Murder Syndrome cost: 23 killers, about 238 dead, some 111 wounded. And counting.

I certainly agree that people from other cultures can feel alienated or offended by the American way of life. Dinesh D’Souza has even argued those feelings explain 9/11 (though I dismantled that claim here).

I think the VDARE argument fails on two counts. One, virtually all the other murderous immigrants the writer cites are non-Asian. I think, in terms of fighting crime, it would be better to accept immigrants based on their country of origin. This young man, the available evidence seems to indicate, was quite an exception for South Koreans. Therefore, no intelligent immigration policy could have stopped this massacre.

Two, to make a convincing case against immigration as a whole, you’d have to document not only that some immigrants murder, but that immigrants are more likely to murder than the native-born. People in general murder sometimes, so pretty much by definition each person brought in will increase the raw number of murders.

What matters is the murder rate, and the writer doesn’t even try to quantify it. There are millions of immigrants, so “238 dead” doesn’t really tell us much. I suspect immigrants as a whole do murder more, but again, South Koreans probably don’t contribute much to that.

By Robert VerBruggen