If you just read the headline, you think "gee, immigrants sure are committing a lot of crimes here", when actually the increase is due to prosecuting the act of them coming here in the first place. That doesn't completely negate the point vis a vis use of law enforcement resources, but it's very different from "immigrants are stealing, raping, and murdering everyone."
Because “crimes” are sociological constructs of a culture.
The same lack of critical analysis behind your question was also missing in the responses to Lombroso’s work in the late 19th century[1], essentializing and legitimating phrenology.
You are committing the same sin as the headline. While 'crimes' may be a sociological construct, there is a pretty large subset of crimes that are based on a basic sense of fairness that is basically identical across all cultures and times that human's have lived. Lending money for interest is a crime in one culture but not in another, but stabbing your neighbor so you can steal his stuff is a crime all the time.
Bzzt. False. All “crime” is a sociological construct. In your second case, are there laws in some cultures that permit you to stab your neighbour such as in the case of “self defence”? Yes.
How the nuance of those laws are defined is a social, cultural, and political exercise in power.
It's not clear what you are even claiming, all ideas and concepts are 'creations' of humans, so you aren't saying anything? I mean 'the moon' is a construction of humans in so far as we identified it as an 'object' distinct from other 'objects', blah blah blah who cares.
You intentionally changed my example of an unprovoked murder of a neighbor with the intent to steal their property to some other, totally different example that has no bearing on the debate. Congratulations, you're a hack.
The question is whether humans have (at least some) consistent views across societies, or whether we are complete tabula rasa. This isn't even a serious debate anymore, clearly there are lots of consistent features that do not vary across any human society, and are even found among primates and other mammals such as dogs and whales and other social sea mammals.
He's ignoring a subset of crimes in order to evaluate what society would be like if that subset wasn't illegal. The point is if you're using lawbreaking as a metric for which people are bad, it may be misleading when used to inform future laws.
Because the Attorney in the press release is implying there is actually an increase in criminal behavior versus an increase in arrests: “Non-U.S. citizen arrests are increasing at a dramatic and concerning pace”
I up-voted your comment because I want to believe it's a sincere question.
You wouldn't ignore a subset of crimes, but you might give more a more detailed breakdown of statistics if that is necessary to avoid misleading people.
For example, lets say I pointed out that people who go to the doctor are more likely to die than people who don't go to the doctor. In fact, the more people go to the doctor, the more likely they are to die. That's pretty misleading since it doesn't control for how healthy the person is. People are going to assume that statistics are meaningful and don't just give out raw data that is totally meaningless due to selection bias.
So, if you are comparing illegal immigrants living in the US to US citizens, guess what, 100% of the illegal immigrants have committed a federal crime, but almost no US citizens commit federal crimes. But this is dumb to quote, since yea we already know they are here illegally, it's right in the stupid name. What we actually care about is whether the people living in this country without a visa are going to shoot us in the face or steal our stuff, since if they are here committing a bunch of crimes like that we can honestly ask whether we should kick them out or not. This question has been studied for over 100 years and the answer is ALWAYS NO.
> This question has been studied for over 100 years and the answer is ALWAYS NO.
I always hear this brought up, but I’m not sure one should be so confident in that conclusion. The answer could always be “no”, but that doesn’t mean the answer is right. Using obviously-incomplete data to come to a conclusion like that seems to imply an agenda.
An honest answer would be “we really don’t know”. If most illegal aliens don’t report the crimes of other illegal aliens, isn’t there a possibility that illegal aliens do commit more crime than US persons? There certainly is! Also, look further into the murder imprisonment rate differences between illegal aliens and US persons.
> I always hear this brought up, but I’m not sure one should be so confident in that conclusion.
I can't explain how statistics work in a post on hackernews, but you should understand that it is possible to quantify uncertainty, and authors of studies are asking the same questions you are when they think about their data. Well, maybe some authors of some studies are morons or have a political axe to grind, but when basically all the studies agree that is called a strong consensus and whenever a consensus exists in a field there are people trying very hard to overturn it. Overturning an accepted 'truth' in a field will basically make your career, it is highly significant, and this is partly what keeps science on the right track. So we can be about as confident in this as we can in anything.
Also conservative talk radio isn't a reputable source to quote, mostly because political pundits (on both sides) lie almost all the time. It's basically their job description.
Being interdicted for being present illegally for the first time (never deported before) isn't even counted as a crime in these stats; those are civil proceedings, not criminal.
According to that, "Non-U.S. citizens, who make up 7% of the U.S. population (per the U.S. Census Bureau accounted for 15% of all federal arrests and 15% of prosecutions in U.S. district court for non-immigration crimes in 2018 (tables 7a and 13)."
So, the reading I'm seeing, is non-U.S. citizens are more than twice as likely to be arrested and prosecuted for a non-immigration based crime.
I actually made a comment on that elsewhere in the thread. If you take a look at table 7a, you can see that the disparity is due to drugs. But yes, non-citizens are more likely to be arrested for federal crimes.
Reading thru the link I found this (I did some formatting):
"The five crime types for which non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court were:
illegal reentry (72% of prosecutions),
drugs (13%),
fraud (4.5%),
alien smuggling (4%),
misuse of visas (2%).
The five crime types for which U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court were:
drugs (38% of prosecutions),
weapons (21%),
fraud (12%),
public order (12%),
alien smuggling (6%)."
Remember, these are prosecutions in courts, some crimes and activities are more likely to get caught than others, and the same plays out with prosecutions. Some evidence is easier than others to obtain and process. So somebody stepping over a physical line on camera much easier to have the prosecution cut and dry over say a drug deal. With that, I'd love to see the headcount/resources utilised in total cost per prosecution. Again, some types of crime may well be almost production line with dedicateds courts running 24/7. Such details are lacking for a true picture.
Though I'm fairly sure such a headline/subject title initially is click baity to the max. Bit like saying that ET caused a rise in "alien smuggling" as 1983 saw a rise in such court cases.
{EDIT - I must remember the double spacing quirks}
It is sketchy, but mainly it's the headline that's misleading. For the 64% number they used all crimes, including immigration. For non-immigration crimes the percent of total is stated as 15%, but they also make sure to note that they are only 7% of the population, meaning their conclusion is that non-us citizens commit a disproportionate amount of non-immigration crimes as well. Arguably THOSE stats are skewed, but it's not quite as bad as the sensational headline would have you believe.
> The five crime types for which non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court in 2018 were illegal reentry (72% of prosecutions), drugs (13%), fraud (4.5%), alien smuggling (4%), and misuse of visas (2%)
> The five crime types for which U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court in 2018 were drugs (38% of prosecutions), weapons (21%), fraud (12%), public order (12%), and alien smuggling (6%)
> Non-U.S. citizens, who make up 7% of the U.S. population (per the U.S. Census Bureau for 2017), accounted for 15% of all federal immigration crimes and 15% of prosecutions in U.S. district court for non-immigration crimes in 2018 (tables 7a and 13).
With regards to the last stat I recommend you look at Table 7a, because that shows most of the discrepancy is drugs.
It's unfortunate that the press release makes it sound like increased enforcement is what this report warrants. My opinion is the opposite. If we are arresting people for solely immigration offenses, then maybe the way that we should address the "significant drain of federal taxpayer funds to [used] prosecute those that are not taxpayers" is by decreasing enforcement.
27 comments
[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 74.2 ms ] threadIf you ignore immigration crimes, non-U.S. citizens are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens.
Without context, this is a textbook case of lying with statistics.
The same lack of critical analysis behind your question was also missing in the responses to Lombroso’s work in the late 19th century[1], essentializing and legitimating phrenology.
[1] https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/the-born-crimi...
How the nuance of those laws are defined is a social, cultural, and political exercise in power.
You intentionally changed my example of an unprovoked murder of a neighbor with the intent to steal their property to some other, totally different example that has no bearing on the debate. Congratulations, you're a hack.
The question is whether humans have (at least some) consistent views across societies, or whether we are complete tabula rasa. This isn't even a serious debate anymore, clearly there are lots of consistent features that do not vary across any human society, and are even found among primates and other mammals such as dogs and whales and other social sea mammals.
You wouldn't ignore a subset of crimes, but you might give more a more detailed breakdown of statistics if that is necessary to avoid misleading people.
For example, lets say I pointed out that people who go to the doctor are more likely to die than people who don't go to the doctor. In fact, the more people go to the doctor, the more likely they are to die. That's pretty misleading since it doesn't control for how healthy the person is. People are going to assume that statistics are meaningful and don't just give out raw data that is totally meaningless due to selection bias.
So, if you are comparing illegal immigrants living in the US to US citizens, guess what, 100% of the illegal immigrants have committed a federal crime, but almost no US citizens commit federal crimes. But this is dumb to quote, since yea we already know they are here illegally, it's right in the stupid name. What we actually care about is whether the people living in this country without a visa are going to shoot us in the face or steal our stuff, since if they are here committing a bunch of crimes like that we can honestly ask whether we should kick them out or not. This question has been studied for over 100 years and the answer is ALWAYS NO.
https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-immigrants-crime-assessing...
I always hear this brought up, but I’m not sure one should be so confident in that conclusion. The answer could always be “no”, but that doesn’t mean the answer is right. Using obviously-incomplete data to come to a conclusion like that seems to imply an agenda.
An honest answer would be “we really don’t know”. If most illegal aliens don’t report the crimes of other illegal aliens, isn’t there a possibility that illegal aliens do commit more crime than US persons? There certainly is! Also, look further into the murder imprisonment rate differences between illegal aliens and US persons.
https://bongino.com/do-illegal-aliens-really-commit-fewer-cr...
I can't explain how statistics work in a post on hackernews, but you should understand that it is possible to quantify uncertainty, and authors of studies are asking the same questions you are when they think about their data. Well, maybe some authors of some studies are morons or have a political axe to grind, but when basically all the studies agree that is called a strong consensus and whenever a consensus exists in a field there are people trying very hard to overturn it. Overturning an accepted 'truth' in a field will basically make your career, it is highly significant, and this is partly what keeps science on the right track. So we can be about as confident in this as we can in anything.
Also conservative talk radio isn't a reputable source to quote, mostly because political pundits (on both sides) lie almost all the time. It's basically their job description.
Being interdicted for being present illegally for the first time (never deported before) isn't even counted as a crime in these stats; those are civil proceedings, not criminal.
So, the reading I'm seeing, is non-U.S. citizens are more than twice as likely to be arrested and prosecuted for a non-immigration based crime.
"The five crime types for which non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court were:
illegal reentry (72% of prosecutions),
drugs (13%),
fraud (4.5%),
alien smuggling (4%),
misuse of visas (2%).
The five crime types for which U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court were:
drugs (38% of prosecutions),
weapons (21%),
fraud (12%),
public order (12%),
alien smuggling (6%)."
Remember, these are prosecutions in courts, some crimes and activities are more likely to get caught than others, and the same plays out with prosecutions. Some evidence is easier than others to obtain and process. So somebody stepping over a physical line on camera much easier to have the prosecution cut and dry over say a drug deal. With that, I'd love to see the headcount/resources utilised in total cost per prosecution. Again, some types of crime may well be almost production line with dedicateds courts running 24/7. Such details are lacking for a true picture.
Though I'm fairly sure such a headline/subject title initially is click baity to the max. Bit like saying that ET caused a rise in "alien smuggling" as 1983 saw a rise in such court cases.
{EDIT - I must remember the double spacing quirks}
1.4% of all arrests in 2014 were federal.
Most law enforcement is by local or state governments.
This headline makes it seem like 64% of all arrests were for non-citizens. Not at all the case.
Note these statistics from the highlights.
> The five crime types for which non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court in 2018 were illegal reentry (72% of prosecutions), drugs (13%), fraud (4.5%), alien smuggling (4%), and misuse of visas (2%)
> The five crime types for which U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court in 2018 were drugs (38% of prosecutions), weapons (21%), fraud (12%), public order (12%), and alien smuggling (6%)
> Non-U.S. citizens, who make up 7% of the U.S. population (per the U.S. Census Bureau for 2017), accounted for 15% of all federal immigration crimes and 15% of prosecutions in U.S. district court for non-immigration crimes in 2018 (tables 7a and 13).
With regards to the last stat I recommend you look at Table 7a, because that shows most of the discrepancy is drugs.
It's unfortunate that the press release makes it sound like increased enforcement is what this report warrants. My opinion is the opposite. If we are arresting people for solely immigration offenses, then maybe the way that we should address the "significant drain of federal taxpayer funds to [used] prosecute those that are not taxpayers" is by decreasing enforcement.