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March 2, 2007
Immigration and crime — disastrous new studyJust a quick debunking of a recent research report that has been widely misrepresented in the press. The study is:Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among First- and Second-Generation Young Men by Ruben G. Rumbaut, Roberto G. Gonzales, Golnaz Komaie, and Charlie V. Morgan, University of California, Irvine
The take-home message of the article is that Hispanics in the USA have a LOW rate of criminality. That is however, not at all what the article shows. Have a look at their Table 1 and you will see what most people know already — that Hispanics lie in between blacks and whites in crime-rate.
The only novelty of the article is this: It points out that it is the CHILDREN of the illegals who are the problem. The illegals themselves are too busy earning money to be much involved with crime.
This is of course VERY bad news — as it is conventionally assumed that the children of immigrants will adopt the characteristics of the host society.
The ECONOMIC advantages of immigration must therefore be balanced against the SOCIAL disadvantages of allowing in on a permanent basis such a troublesome group.
The study is being hailed as good news for the pro-immigrant camp. It is very much the reverse.
2012 update: The Table I referred to above can also be accessed here. It is derived from the official US census of the year 2000. On reflection, I doubt that it tells us anything at all. Illegals tend to have a fervent desire to stay beneath official notice of any kind so the proportion of them who failed to complete the census forms would have been very large, thus greatly distorting the statistics obtained. And on sensitive matters like criminality, even those who did complete the forms might well have been not entirely frank.
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