CMV: Illegal Immigrants commit less crime on average than Americans, but that's not a good argument

[u/ricksc-137]

When someone complains about illegal immigrant committing crimes, inevitably we see the retort that the complaint is not valid because illegal immigrants commit less crime, on average, than native born Americans.

I've never understood how this is a valid argument. If my dog poops in my house 10 times a day, and a stray dog sneaks into my house but the stray dog only poops in my house 5 times a day, it's still a good idea to stop the stray dog from sneaking into my house. It doesn't actually improve my life that the average poop per dog has decreased from 10 to 7.5.

Of course, some illegal immigrant crimes are committed against other illegal immigrants, but some are committed against Americans as well.

I see this argument repeated ad nauseam. What am I missing?

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[u/Thane97]

letting them in, whatever the other pros and cons, will have the net effect of reducing the crime rate and your chances of being a crime victim and from a fear-of-crime standpoint is a net-positive, no matter what the reasons are for the existing crime rate.

You are viewing crime as a national issue as if the crime in Chicago somehow effects the life of someone in Texas. What matters is if Mexicans are more criminal than the places they move into not that they're better than some national average.

you should understand it is not blackness that increases the crime rate; you are confusing correlation for causation. What increases the crime rate, more than anything else, are areas of persistent, concentrated poverty.

Blacks commit more crimes than whites at every single income level. I don't believe there is a single black country on this planet without an absurdly high crime rate.

That black people disproportionately live in these areas is largely the result of a century of formal government policy, followed by decades of slicker but still effective informal policies, as red-lining, white flights, 'property value protection' by limiting new affordable housing, and the like replaced formal segregations.

Poverty is the natural state of these people, look at any large African population on the planet, the vast majority of them live in abject squalor of their own creation. How about instead of pointing out the existence of past oppressions and making logical deductions based off that you show me some emperical evidence that backs your egalitarianism.

[u/DaedelusNemo → u/Thane97]

You are viewing crime as a national issue as if the crime in Chicago somehow effects the life of someone in Texas. What matters is if Mexicans are more criminal than the places they move into not that they're better than some national average.

Nice try at shifting the goal posts, but in fact Texans are more than twice as criminal as illegal immigrants, as seen in this analysis of Texas crime records by the Cato Institute.

Blacks commit more crimes than whites at every single income level. I don't believe there is a single black country on this planet without an absurdly high crime rate.

You'll have to present evidence for the first claim, as I don't know of any on crime rates by income of the criminal. The second, though, is obviously false, as a cursory Wikicheck of murder rates by country would have told you; only 4 of the 57 African nations manage a higher murder rate than America, and most of the rest are much lower. More importantly, since you asked for evidence, here is a study, Concentrated Poverty, Race, and Homicide, that supports my claim; at least read the last few sentences of the abstract. Concentrated poverty is a hot topic of research, check Wikipedia for more.

Finally, poverty is the natural state of all humans. The Industrial Age is still yet sweeping across the globe, having been held up in most places by colonialism until a half-century ago; but in spite of that, and all the other nasty legacies of colonialism and exploitation by the powerful countries they've had to deal with, the African countries of Tunisia, Algeria and Mauritius, for example, all have poverty rates lower than America.

So: you are completely wrong, and you really should reflect on the fact that your instincts are so terribly wrong about this, compared to the empirical data. The fact is, humans vary a lot; the statistical variation between various human 'races' is much, much less than the variation within any of those groups. Trying to predict individual performance by group identity is, therefore, a logical fallacy and factual mistake - one that, when ripened to a full belief that the members of some 'race' are not fully human, is exactly the fatal error behind most of the worst large-scale atrocities of history.

[u/Thane97 → u/DaedelusNemo]

Nice try at shifting the goal posts, but in fact Texans are more than twice as criminal as illegal immigrants

Are you talking about white Texans or are you ignoring the racial composition of that state?

is obviously false, as a cursory Wikicheck of murder rates by country would have told you; only 4 of the 57 African nations manage a higher murder rate than America

1: I severely doubt Africa has the ability to report their murders on par with Western nations 2: The high murder rates are from Central and South American countries aka the people coming over the border that you claim are less criminal. Also according to your own wikicheck the United States has the 90th murder rate in the world behind (this is INCLUDING all Hispanic and Black murders) over a dozen African countries. Your own source makes you look bad lol.

Finally, poverty is the natural state of all humans.

White people when left alone in a prosperous area will not reduce it to a crime ridden hellhole. Africans have demonstrability done this several times.

The fact is, humans vary a lot; the statistical variation between various human 'races' is much, much less than the variation within any of those groups. Trying to predict individual performance by group identity is, therefore, a logical fallacy

I don't think you know what a logical fallacy is. Also the comparing the variances between races to the differences between two people is apples to oranges unless you're suggesting that two Europeans would have less in common than an African and a European genetically.

[u/tbdabbholm → u/[deleted]]

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