Talk:Illegal immigration to the United States

Relationship between illegal immigration and crime

This subsection requires work: it is not a discussion about the relationship between immigration and crime but illegal immigration and crime. Yet much of this subsection merely provides evidence that there is no relationship between immigration and crime. I have tried to improve the section by adding clarity at the start, but this has been reverted. I therefore appeal to editors to help improve this section - by all means include material that examines the relationship between immigration and crime, but make sure that it is clear that this is not addressing the central issue of the subsection. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Birtig (talk • contribs) 19:21, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

It is valid to mention both studies of immigration in general (legal and illegal) and illegal immigration specifically. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:20, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

This article isn't about legal immigration but illegal immigration, so no reason to mention the legal immigrants. Dream Focus 16:06, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• The outline is obviously

(a) adding illegal immigrants increases crime overall, and

(b) studies say it is less than a proportional number of native-born citizens would, and

(c) some caveats about data or counterclaims.

(d) some complete tosh - speculations more illegals would decrease crime rates, that CA says adding more drivers did not increase accidents, blaming IRCA of 1986, etc. “Found no evidence” does not mean anything anyway, it means found no evidence to look at.

Could cut out the bottom half of the section to turn down the tosh percentage I think. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 02:57, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

evidence that illegal immigration increases the rate of crime

I propose that the phrase "There is no evidence that illegal immigration increases the rate of crime in the United States" be removed. It's a logical fallacy, since illegal entry into the US is a crime by itself. 73.121.228.133 (talk) 03:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Counterpoint: The fallacy is all yours, as only illegal ENTRY is a crime, and the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants do not enter illegally, they enter legally and then overstay their visas, which is emphatically NOT a crime; it only allows for a civil case to be made. Civil matters are, by definition, not criminal matters. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants are not automatically criminals, because illegally IMMIGRATING (not ENTERING, but IMMIGRATING) is not a crime. I propose this section be resolved.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.145.95.151 (talk) 23:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, I think the answer may lie in the fact that the remedy to an overstay (deportation and temporary banishment) is not exactly civil in nature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.78.11.150 (talk) 04:54, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

The 2017 Annual Report of the US Sentencing Commission has statics about federal crimes, and they include information on citizen vs. non-citizen crime rates. It's worth taking a look at that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:600:9500:3180:A83F:2FE7:68AD:A6F0 (talk) 06:02, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

It says that 40.7% of all offenders were non-citizens. But that is not helpful because most non-citizens were charged with illegal immigration. Also, there is no breakdown between legal and illegal immigrants. And many of the non-citizens are non-immigrants - they're smugglers, tourists or aliens extradited to the U.S. And it includes non-citizen nationals from American Samoa. TFD (talk) 06:30, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Actually, dig deeper [1] : there were 66873 cases covered in the 2017 report. Of these, 19220 were immigration offences - either illegal re-entry or alien smuggling. Interesting that a significant number of those charged with illegal re-entry had their sentences increased due to also having non-immigration related convictions. Therefore these figures do support the view of a significant rate of criminality among those caught and charged with illegal re-entry.Birtig (talk) 14:51, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

No, it proves that a high percentage of people charged with immigration offenses have non-immigration related convictions. The fact they have non-immigration related convictions is the reason they are charged with immigration offenses. First, it's usually the way their immigration status was discovered and secondly, the government is more likely to charge people with immigration related offenses it they have been convicted of non-immigration related offenses. Otherwise law abiding undocumented workers are almost never charged with immigration offenses. In 2018, of 8,531 "criminal aliens" arrested, the majority (4,502) had prior convictions for illegal entry.[2] Bear in mind since most criminal cases are dealt with at the state or local level, you would have to include them in your comparison of criminality. Furthermore, policy requires that any interpretation of statistics must be sourced. TFD (talk) 16:41, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

In the United States criminal aliens committed 504,043 Drugs offenses, 404,788 traffic violations, 213,047 assaults. 125,322 larceny/thefts, 120,810 fraud/forgery/counterfeiting, 115,045 burglaries, 94,492 weapons violations, 81,710 motor vehicle thefts, 52,384 disorderly conduct, 42,609 robberies, 25,064 homicides, 14,788 kidnapping, 2,005 arsons between the years 1954-2010. 90% of the crimes were after 1990.Disciple4lif (talk) 17:13, 30 March 2019 (UTC)Disciple4lifDisciple4lif (talk) 17:13, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

If undocumented are not documented how do we know who it is that are committing crime? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1017:B809:F234:2D7F:30DC:305B:E383 (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Because NIBRS? EvergreenFir (talk) 03:17, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Edits Needed for Grammar, Clarity

I don't meet the requirements for editing a semi-protected article. Can someone please fix this for me?

In the overview (the first section, before the comments), the second-to-last sentence reads:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being in the country illegally – have no statistically meaningful impact on crime or reduce the crime rate."

Logically speaking, it's redundant to say they have no statistically meaningful impact on crime and also that they don't reduce the crime rates. But first, just grammatically speaking, it should read:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being in the country illegally – have no statistically meaningful impact on crime, nor do they reduce the crime rate."

This is still syntactically incorrect though, because as-written, this sentence means sanctuary cities reduce the crime rate, which isn't what the author was trying to say, because that is either incomplete or nonsensical. I'm pretty sure they were trying to indicate that sanctuary cities do not have different crime rates or lower crime rates (again, redundant) solely by dint of being sanctuary cities. Also, "statistically meaningful" is a weird way to say "statistically significant", so I changed that too. Finally, "designed to not prosecute" is a) awkwardly worded and b) confusing, so I fixed that too. All told, if I am interpreting the author correctly, a better way to put this is:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to prevent the prosecution of people solely for being in the country illegally – do not have statistically significant differences in crime rates when compared to non-sanctuary cities with comparable traits."

BUT! If I'm wrong about what the original author meant and they were trying to say that sanctuary cities don't impact crime rates in the larger region they are in, though, it should be:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to prevent the prosecution of people solely for being in the country illegally – do not have any statistically significant impact on regional crime rates."

AN ADDENDUM FROM ANOTHER VIEWER: I would like to know what type of statistical test and the significance level being employed to determine 'statistical significance/ non-significance'. Were the data employed fulfilling the assumptions of randomness, normal distribution and equal variances? If not, were they appropriately transformed? Simply failing to reject the alternative hypothesis does not necessarily mean the null hypothesis is correct - in conducting the test in this case, one has simply failed to reject the null hypothesis.

Please stop abusing inferential statistics to make political cases. The references provided are not academic, peer-reviewed papers. They are linked to think-tank and news agencies that have had political connections for decades and often employ poor statistical rigour or none at all.

Can someone fix the archiving?

The archiving is malformed. It doesn't show the last three archives. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:38, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans: The archive box has now been updated to an automatically indexing one. RhinosF1 (talk) 09:26, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Illegal immigrants / families living in US

Hi, I just want to provide some useful information to US government regarding illegal immigrants living in USA , right now if I am writing on right page then please respond me I shall be provide these details or help by providing the concerned email address.. Thanks for reading me — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aqamar01 (talk • contribs) 07:41, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

@Aqamar01:Wikipedia is not connected with the US government and can not deal with this. RhinosF1 (talk) 07:52, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

See : this website RhinosF1 (talk) 07:53, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Listing every crime committed by illegal immigrants

One editor keeps inserting various criminal cases involving illegal immigrants to this article. This is not where we list individual crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:18, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

• Nonsense. I listed a handful of bluelinked crimes. It is standard procedure to link to articles as examples. See, for example: Rape in France#Notable offenders; Immigration and crime in Germany#Blade weapon crimes; Crime in Greece#Immigrant crime; Milieu (organized crime in France)#Revitalization: 2000–present. We have subheads, and the subheads link to examples. We have a subhead on a topic, and add links to examples within the subhead. Illegal immigration to the United States#Harm to illegal immigrants, for example, includes links to Death of Anastasio Hernández-Rojas. E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:45, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, I'm well-aware that some editors go around Wikipedia systematically adding murders, rapes and other heinous crimes by immigrants to every tangential article. It's wrong then, it's wrong now. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:52, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
• The NPOV tag is absurd. The neutrality of the article is disputed because you're not allowed to have your list of random heinous crimes committed by illegal immigrants in it? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:54, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

• Note that Illegal immigration to the United States#Attacks on illegal immigrants links to Sexual assault of migrants from Latin America to the United States but a subhead on Violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants was deleted on the grounds that it links to... articles about crimes committed by illegal immigrants. E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:05, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, one is about a broad topic, while the other was just your random collection of individual grotesque crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:09, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• Instead of deleting it, you could tag the subhead for improvement and give other editors a chance to WPFIXIT, as per WP:PRESERVE.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:20, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• No, the content does not belong and was beyond repair. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:26, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

POV issues

Page is problematically unbalanced. It devoted intense attention to the positive aspects of illegal immigration, but includes little or no discussion to negative impact of illegal immigration. At points this becomes absurdly imbalanced. Illegal immigration to the United States#Harm to illegal immigrants is not balances by consideration of negative impacts of illegal immigration. Illegal immigration to the United States#Attacks on illegal immigrants is covered, but violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants are not. Article needs some serious NPOV improvement.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:57, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Wrong, there's an entire section devoted to illegal immigration and crime.[3] Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:01, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• LOL. Illegal immigration to the United States#Relationship between illegal immigration and crime is a POV subhead that lists ONLY studies that support he POV immigrants are notably law abiding. While theis is teh majority position within social science scholarship, a a NPOV section would list reliable scholarship with findings that problematize this POV.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:16, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• The comment above does a good job of demonstrating how spurious the NPOV complaint is. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:28, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• I agree that an any article that argues that immigration has no negative crime impacts is necessarily framed by the fact someone at some point must have argued the contrary. These sources should be cited for NPOV. Also, agree that blue-linked citations are WP:COMMON. XavierItzm (talk) 11:47, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• "I agree that an any article that argues that immigration has no negative crime impacts is necessarily framed by the fact someone at some point must have argued the contrary." ??? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 11:51, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

User:E.M.Gregory Well it does lack NPOV representing all significant views. I would recommend start by thinning the fluffier propaganda of paragraph 2, the not particularly iconic quotes, and maybe some of the para 1 cites that are not BESTSOURCES from lines with over 4 cites on them. Then let’s talk about what are the top 10 kinds of thing in Google prominence and see what’s missing ? Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:48, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

More "illegal immigrant crime porn"-style content

The editor E.M.Gregory has added yet another case of an individual undocumented immigrant who committed a crime to the article (Murder of Eliud Montoya), and the case is also used a source for the absurdly trivial statement "Illegal immigrants sometimes employ and economically exploit other illegal immigrants".[4] It of course does not need to be stated that illegal immigrants employ and exploit each other, just as we do not need to specify that legal immigrants also employ and exploit undocumented immigrants, or that US-born natives also employ and exploit undocumented immigrants, or that naturalized citizens also employ and exploit undocumented immigrants. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 15:50, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Additional "illegal immigrant crime porn"-style content[5] was added to the article: An undocumented immigrant was arrested for a misdemeanor and spent 10 hrs in custody. This undocumented immigrant was not turned over to ICE because California law prohibits this. The undocumented immigrant later participates in a drive-by shooting. The sheriff's office claims that the shooting would have been prevented if only the immigrant had been turned over to ICE and deported. This is WP:UNDUE and trivial, and falsely suggests (in a violation of WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV) that sanctuary city policies are linked to crime when every study on the topic shows that they are not. Of course, every crime committed by someone in the US would have been prevented if the individual in question had not been in the US. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:14, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Snoogans misstates the details of the 2018 Tulare County spree shooting, a perfectly WP:COMMON type of illustrative link. WP:OWN reminder. E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:24, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

• Feel free to add details of the outrageous exploitation of illegal immigrant workers, who committed the Murder of Eliud Montoya because he was going to report them for exploiting illegal immigrant workers. The murderers housed illegal workers in a shabby trainer park and siphoned off their wages for an amount totaling $3.5 million. This is an excellent example of the exploitation of illegal alien workers, used in an approproate manner in the appropriate section of the page.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:20, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
• Purdue chicken would be a good addition to that section. Which could also link to Tyson Foods#Employment of illegal immigrants.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:20, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

WP:OWN issues

Snooganssnoogans, you have been the principal editor of this page for several years, but this does not mean that you can elimate content because you WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. Please read WP:OWN.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:07, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

I have provided policy-based justifications for the removals, and started talk page discussions, as well as alerted you to your edit-warring and that this page has a DS warning. Despite all of this, you have failed to adhere to WP:BRD and continue to edit-war your content in the article. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:16, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT accusation is rich given than you basically cop to holding a WP:FRINGE position and say that your edits are intended to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, which in this case is to fill the Illegal immigration to the United States article with "illegal immigrant crime porn" content because the academic research on illegal immigration and crime doesn't show what you want it to show.[6] Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:34, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Trying to wedge reports about crimes by undocumented immigrants is WP:COATRACK at best. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:46, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The fact is that "illegal immigrants" are less likely to commit crimes than legal residents.There is no reason to challenge that reality with bogus research papers or examples of illegal immigrants who committed serious crimes. TFD (talk) 23:37, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

That is not exactly what was said, and is not the only view ... and it’s the considered opinion and study outcome, not a “fact”. Overstatement seems to make the actual results unreliable. Markbassett (talk) 04:02, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

"Trying to wedge reports about crimes by undocumented immigrants is WP:COATRACK at best." I agree, but we might have enough material for a spin-off article. Are there reliable sources which study this topic? Dimadick (talk) 17:53, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Economic impact of illegal immigration

The introduction to the page paints illegal immigration as unanimously positive for the American economy. However, illegal immigration is harmful to low-wage workers and other labor that competes with illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants increase production by supplementing the labor force, increasing competition for labor, and lowering the cost of goods. This benefits the economy by better allocating labor resources and increasing consumer surplus through lower cost of goods. But the labor that illegal immigration competes with does lose out, as competition in their professions' increases.

The introduction should point this out. Illegal immigration has a net negative economic impact on labor that competes with it in the American economy.

• concur the social science research on this is under-covered on this page.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:21, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Sources

Too long

Page is far too long. Suggest that seceral sections would be better handled as separate pages, with brief summaries and hatnotes here.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:21, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• User:Snooganssnoogans. In keeping with the style of the page, which is to hatnote many section to break out articles due to length, would you be interested in helping condense subhead Illegal immigration to the United States#Relationship between illegal immigration and crime by moving some of what we have here to some of the material now on this page to new page Illegal immigration to the United States and crime, where it can be expanded?E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:28, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

• Content can usually always be trimmed and be expressed in clearer and more concise ways. However, I don't see any noticeable problems with the Illegal immigration to the United States#Relationship between illegal immigration and crime sub-section. And certainly, no content should be removed just to put it in Illegal immigration to the United States and crime, which is just a FORK full of 'illegal immigrant crime porn' content that you created earlier today when you weren't allowed several weeks ago to fill this article with that content or create a 'illegal immigrant crime porn' category.[7] That FORK will end up getting deleted. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:40, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Gang activity section

There's a sub-section about gang activity that's sourced to testimony from heather mac donald (no expertise on immigration or crime), CIS (renowned for its shoddy research intended to highlight the harms of immigration), a dead Wash Ex link and a primary source FBI report. We already have a sub-section that summarizes the research on the relationship between immigration and crime. The 'gang activity' sub-section should be deleted. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:02, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Heather MacDonald was quoting reports from the FBI and Justice Department studies. Those are both reliable sources.Exzachary (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Heather Mac Donald is not a reliable source, and should not be cited for her interpretation of what FBI and Justice Department data say. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:28, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

The link to the FBI.gov page is in the article: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/national-gang-threat-assessment-2009-pdf Exzachary (talk) 00:33, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Citation does not prove claim

Hi all

The following claim is made in the second paragraph "Research shows that illegal immigrants increase the size of the U.S. economy, contribute to economic growth, enhance the welfare of natives, contribute more in tax revenue than they collect, reduce American firms' incentives to offshore jobs and import foreign-produced goods, and benefit consumers by reducing the prices of goods and services."

I removed citation 3 as it does not address the effects/impacts of illegal immigration specifically, rather it deals with immigration generally. My edit was reverted on the basis that the study deals with legal and illegal immigration. This is precisely my point - the citation is unable to support the claim regarding illegal immigration specifically.

It is essential that any claim is directly supported by a reference. This citation does not support the claim made and should therefore be removed Birtig (talk) 16:56, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree. The article is only about illegal immigration, so no reason why people would shove in things including legal migration unless they were trying to mislead people. Dream Focus 16:58, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I have reverted his reverting of you removing that. I read through the link and its about legal migration. Obviously the government decides how many people can get in, and that helps the economy, it a controlled amount of how many can handle, and also if they are legally here they can legally be hired and pay taxes. It has nothing to do with illegal immigration at all though. Dream Focus 17:03, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

The notion that this 642 page state-of-the-art review of the academic research on immigration does not cover the specific economic impact of illegal immigration is completely false, and it is beyond me why editors who can't be bothered to read a cited source are making claims as to the contents of that source, and going so far as to edit-war the source out of the article. The body of the article literally quotes segments of the NAS report on the economic impact of illegal immigration. You should self-revert immediately, and stop making unsubstantiated claims. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:19, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

What sort of editing oversight does National Academies Press have? Do they publish anything sent to them, or just those of a certain political view they agree with? I'm not finding the answers on their website or Wikipedia article. Are they a reliable source? Dream Focus 17:37, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

(ec) The economic and fiscal impact of illegal immigration is covered in many places of the NAS report. You can simply ctrl+F "unauthorized", "undocumented" or "illegal" to find the content. In the future, I suggest you actually read the source rather than make brazenly false claims about what it contains / not contains. User initially asked me to substantiate that the report covered illegal immigration. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:38, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Searching around shows a lot of different things. A lot to sort through. Please point to where exactly the claim is made, instead of just stating you are certain its in there somewhere. Dream Focus 17:54, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Which claim do you want substantiated? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:00, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I would be grateful if you could provide a quotation that directly supports the claim "Research shows that illegal immigrants increase the size of the U.S. economy, contribute to economic growth, enhance the welfare of natives, contribute more in tax revenue than they collect, reduce American firms' incentives to offshore jobs and import foreign-produced goods, and benefit consumers by reducing the prices of goods and services." If that is contained within the book that is cited, then the article would be improved if you could substitute it for the present reference. Thanks Birtig (talk) 19:35, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Pages 194-195 substantiate part of the sentence. I do not have the time to re-read this report to find all the other parts. This report along with the other cited sources substantiate the whole sentence. Are you admitting that you did not read this source even though you made brazen claims about what it contained / didn't contain? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:41, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Of course I didn't read the entire book - I shouldn't have to. The synopsis of the book provides no indication that the book is relevant to the subject of this article, let alone provides any support to the claim made, so the reference should identify the relevant page to help any reader who wished to check for themselves. (Ideally, an actual quotation being provided would be a considerable help.) Birtig (talk) 19:58, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Of course, reports by NAS are reliable. If you're unfamiliar with NAS, you can start your reading here[8]. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:00, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

These are the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Research Council. It is as blue chip as a source can be.E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:17, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

ummm but Engineering and Medicine are not RS qualifications on this topic, nor is the text particularly notable or to the point nor specific to a page within several hundred some part is sort-of similar? ... Perhaps the particular author of that part would be worth a cite, but it’s out at the moment and seems better to leave out. Markbassett (talk) 04:21, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

What an absurd comment. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 10:34, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Novels? films?

There must be some notable ones addressing this topic. I added Deadly Voyage, but there must be other notable movies and novels. Not just documentaries.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:18, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

What about Born in East L.A. (film)? TFD (talk) 13:35, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Statistics

Is that an RS? Looks good to me and provides a lot of relevant data. One thing I noticed was that the number of "240,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes" (during which period of time?) currently on the page is apparently incorrect. Based on this additional source, such numbers appear for the number of administrative arrests of illegal immigrants (just because they were illegally in the country?) during 8 years from 2004 to 2012, based on overestimated data ("Data in Table 6 should be interpreted with caution, particularly when it comes to Secure Communities, because..."). I just removed this for now, but anyone is welcome to look at these numbers and fix it. My very best wishes (talk) 23:13, 3 March 2019 (UTC)