According to Wall Street Journal, crime rate fell sharply in the United States from 2008 to 2009. Particularly notable is Phoenix, AZ, where violent crime dropped by 17 percent. In particular murder rate dropped by 26.9 percent. Number of reported kidnapping also dropped in Phoenix. Property crimes dropped by 21 percent in Phoenix overall, including 36.3 percent drop in auto theft. All other major cities in Arizona registered a decline in crime rate also.
So yeah, those illegal immigrants were rampaging through the streets of Arizona, right? The Korean would love to see what other BS excuse xenophobes will come up with next.
While traveling through Asia for four years, I met more xenophobes from Korea than all other nations combined. I don't imagine that gets discussed much on this blog. But hey, good job keeping the US under that microscope.
ReplyDeleteI don't imagine that gets discussed much on this blog.
ReplyDeleteYou imagine wrong. Look at the right sidebar of this blog.
Guh gets a point for bringing up a tu quoque argument, but The Korean gets two points for the quick slap-down.
ReplyDeleteAnd Guh should know who are the most racist.
As a 19-year-old white girl raised in America, I must say that this new "law" completely infuriates me. It is racism, pure and simple, and I don't see how anyone can argue otherwise. What really baffles me is that the majority of Americans seem to support this law! I can't understand why we must constantly learn the same lesson: that discrimination- in all its forms- is wrong, plain and simple. It's my personal theory that the white man is simply terrified of becoming the minority for once.
ReplyDeleteI don't really know much, but I do know that this is wrong and I will continue to speak out against it!
Btw, thanks for all of your posts, I love this blog!!!
I see statistical innumeracy is alive and well; the stats quoted tell us little to nothing about what you want them to tell us.
ReplyDeleteYou can't draw any conclusions from them because you don't know all the other trends of interest which could arbitrarily increase or decrease crime. Perhaps crime should have dropped even more than it did!
It's not hard to find statistics that reflect badly on the illegal immigrants:
> But a comprehensive study released late last year from the Center for Immigration Studies cited federal law enforcement data showing that illegal immigrants made up a disproportionate share of the state prison populations in California and Arizona.
> In 2004, the year when the data was most recently available, 12.4 percent of California prisoners were illegal immigrants, as compared with an estimated 6.9 percent of the state population. In Arizona, 11.1 percent of the prison population was undocumented, compared with 7 percent of the overall state population. In Texas, the percentage was also slightly higher in the prisons than it was statewide.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/29/border-states-dealing-illegal-immigrant-crime-data-suggests/
> Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said about 10% of his department's arrests are illegal immigrants — a number close to the estimated percentage of undocumented migrants in the local population — but the Maricopa County sheriff's office, which runs the jail for Phoenix and surrounding cities, said 20% of its inmates are illegal immigrants. Fifteen percent of state prisoners are illegal immigrants.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03/nation/la-na-arizona-crime-20100503
(What's that, you say? My argument using those paragraphs may be flawed because of unmentioned trends - like illegal immigration being inherently a crime? Congratulations; now apply your criticism to your own argument.)
Oh, and speaking of unaccounted for confounding factors, here's a good one:
> Phoenix has become a hub of human trafficking, and now it has kidnapping numbers that rival cities in Mexico because of smugglers who hold illegal immigrants hostage in drop houses in the city. The city's crime rates are comparable with those of other big cities, but the presence of well-armed trafficking groups colors the picture.
Whups, wrong quote. I meant this one:
> What most in law enforcement here do agree on is that the victims of crime by illegal immigrants tend to be other immigrants. Community activists argue that the new law will make it worse for law-abiding immigrants because few immigrants, whether documented or not, will want to deal with police.
> "No one's going to call the cops," said Alfredo Gutierrez, a former state Senate majority leader who opposed the bill. He said law-abiding immigrants of all types were fleeing the state out of fear of being subjected to racial profiling.
> "They're getting rid of the folks who would report the crooks," Gutierrez said. "The crooks are staying. This is like heaven for them."
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03/nation/la-na-arizona-crime-20100503/2
Sounds like a nice source of nonreporting bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias#Sampling_bias).
tl;dr: this is not a clear issue and you are stupid for saying that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid.