11 Comments

Please continue writing these pieces. I thoroughly enjoy them!

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> Such a brutal domestic campaign would likely raise—not lower—crime rates. Why? For starters, undocumented immigrants are less likely to be criminals than native-born Americans. The best data on this comes from the conservative border state of Texas, which is the only state that keeps decent statistics on criminality by immigration status.

That’s not how numbers work? In a smaller group, there are less criminals and less crimes, even if the subgroup you removed wasn’t the most criminal, so the numerator will lower. And the denominator of crime rate is registered population, which… er… can’t include undocumented people? What am I missing here?

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Here’s a thought experiment to explain it: Imagine there is a population of 200 people where 100 are natives and 100 are illegal immolation. Imagine 4 of the illegal immigrants are criminals and 6 of the natives are criminals. The total crime rate of the population is 5% (10/200).

Next, imagine you deport all the illegal immigrants. The remaining natives have a crime rate of 6% (from before). The crime rate is now 6% (6/100). The rate rose.

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(And also, shouldn't we in some sense care about the absolute number of crimes?)

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I understand what you're getting at. I claim that crime rate _as currently calculated_ would be more like 10/104 than 10/200, because the illegal ~~immolants~~ immigrants are probably not fully counted in such stats.

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Yours seems to be an argument for population loss. But if you are going to keep the current population level or grow it, it is better from a crime standpoint to do it with a less crime prone rather than a more crime prone group (which would mean more undocumented immigrants). Your epithet for them is seriously uncool (and borders on violating our site's policies against hate speech).

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No, my argument is simply that Trump _will_ be able to cook the books.

The "epithet" is a play on your own typo:

> where 100 are natives and 100 are illegal immolation.

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Apologies for not understanding your misspelling. But I don't understand the rest of you argument.

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The numbers of undocumented immigrants are probably underestimated.

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We can argue the statistics out but they begin with the position that ALL illegal immigrants are de facto criminals. Therefore any subsequent crimes they commit is just icing on the criminal cake also putting an additional burden on the law enforcement and judicial resources.

It is a sick but almost irrefutable logic that extends to any group that needs to be targeted for violence.

And mass deportation is violence against humanity.

For Trump and his followers the cruelty is the point and they would not blanch at any amount of money and resources to execute their plans.

In the 1950s even American citizens were deported in the last mass deportation of immigrants. Hopefully information and communication systems will help prevent that injustice being repeated.

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Huh

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