Talk:Illegal immigration to the United States and crime

Misleading GAO report which falsely suggests illegal immigrants are crime-prone

It's deja vu at illegal immigration Wikipedia articles, because once again, the GAO study about "criminal aliens" (i.e. immigrants who commit crimes, not illegal immigrants who commit crimes) is being added to an article to falsely suggest that illegal immigrants are more crime-prone than natives. This report should not be in the article because: (1) it's not exclusively about illegal immigrants, (2) federal prisoners are an infinitesimally small share of the total prison population, and (3) individuals who cross borders are more likely to be charged with federal crimes. The misleading nature of the report has been highlighted by fact-checkers.[1][2][3] FactCheck.org refers to it as "exaggerated — and misleading."[4]

Furthermore, the editor Bneu2013 has now by my counting done five reverts within the span of 12 hours. The editor should self-revert immediately. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 12:46, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I think the pot is calling the kettle black here. Snooganssnoogans was the first to revert, and, until recently was unwilling to discuss this on the talk page. The reports imply that illegal aliens could be more responsible for some crimes, but not necessarily are. All of the studies about this imply, but don't prove, for that matter. So, according to Sonnganssnoogans, we're supposed to completely disregard reports conducted by the US government over a few independent factchecker sites that are considered biased in favor of a certain outcome. Bneu2013 (talk) 19:04, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Per WP:BRD, it's entirely fine for me to revert your addition of misleading anti-immigration nonsense - in particular, given that this content was soundly rejected in February 2019[5]. It's not fine for you to revert on five occasions within 12 hrs to re-insert your fringe nonsense into the article. I've explained why that GAO report is misleading, and backed it up with RS citations. A competent good-faith editor would say "fair enough" and self-revert. What you're now doing instead is sticking your head in the ground and arguing that WP:RS are unreliable because you don't like what they say. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:14, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

In February it does not appear to have been the same source that was used. The controversy appears to have been about an NPR article that cited a GAO report from 2011. The two reports I used are from 2005. Have the reports been debunked as unreliable sources? It certainly isn't "fringe nonsense" or "anti-immigrant"; these responses are nothing more than POV appeals to emotion, and say absolutely nothing about the credibility of the sources. I find it hard to believe that a report conducted and released by the US government is unreliable, when a bunch of independent sites are. Snooganssnoogans, your response is not only weak, it is nothing more than a fallacious emotional attack. I have not removed any of the sources; all I have been saying is that some of these "studies" are slanted to gain a certain result. That's what I meant when I said that studies reported by Fox News will contradict studies reported by MSNBC. That is only one of countless examples. The general consensus among academics appears to be that there is no evidence that illegal immigrants commit crimes at the same or higher rates than native-born individuals. This isn't necessarily the entire story, however, and this article has yet to go more in depth on that, other than on a few occasions, such as the study that found that children of immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than their parents. Bneu2013 (talk) 20:11, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

No one has claimed that the GAO report is unreliable. This is not difficult: it's misleading and false to use this report to rebut existing studies and to suggest that illegal immigrants are crime-prone, because that's not what the report shows. It's already been explained to you why your use of the report is misleading. Instead of self-reverting, you have opted to stick your head in the sand, ignore my explanation of why this report is misused, and claim that peer-reviewed research is unreliable. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:24, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

The GAO report covers both legal and illegal immigrants, just like many of the other studies about this. It does not prove that illegal immigrants are disproportionately responsible for crimes; it doesn't prove anything, for that matter. All of these studies suggest, but don't prove. I'm pretty certain that no one has surveyed the crime rate of every single illegal immigrant currently in the US. The vast majority of studies only suggest that the crime rate amongst all illegal immigrants is lower than that of native-born US citizens. This is probably true, yet the exact rate remains a mystery. Most of these studies do not agree on every single aspect. I'm not saying that the current studies in use in the article are unreliable, they just might not tell the whole story. However, for the sources that are a news report about a study, it would probably be better to use the actual study than the report because the reports often misrepresent the study, and, as I've already mentioned multiple times, are sometimes biased either way. The GAO report appears to go in-depth about certain types of crimes, something that some of the other studies do not appear to do. I would like for a third party to take a look at this. Bneu2013 (talk) 20:47, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Can you please explain why you keep defending your use of the GAO report when several reliable sources explicitly say that the particular way you use the report is misleading and gives a false impression of illegal immigrants' crime rate? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:57, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I've already explained that the GAO reports do not claim that illegal immigrants are more crime prone, and yet Snooganssnoogans, who seems to have a POV-related bias toward the subject of this article, continues to insist that the report is misleading. The GAO reports just go more in-depth. I'm done with this conversation for now. We need a third party here. Bneu2013 (talk) 21:05, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Don't have much more to add beyond what's already been said. Just commenting that, Bneu2013, you really should take a look at WP:EDITWAR and WP:ONUS. The burden is on you to find consensus to add material, not on Snooganssnoogans (or me, or someone else) to convince you. Repeatedly restoring it isn't a good idea because, among other things, it makes you automatically wrong on Wikipedia, regardless of what merit your actual arguments may have. Likewise trying to undermine someone's on-topic arguments by saying they have "a POV-related bias" doesn't tend to be helpful, either. I added a discretionary sanctions template to your userpage. As the template says, it isn't meant as a warning or to tell you that something is going to happen -- it's a heads up that admins (which I am not) have extra leeway to block/ban/whatnot for things like edit warring. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:45, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

So I was edit warring even though I was the first one reverted and no consensus was yet achieved? Wow. The reports I used are reliable and, yes, partially do contradict some of the other reports, even though they do not study the exact same aspects. The idea that any of these reports might be flawed and therefore have some inaccuracies or not tell the whole story is not a conspiracy theory; it is not a wild slip of the imagination to suspect that a source known to have a bias might intentionally manipulate the result of a study to achieve their desired outcome. Is there currently a policy for how to deal with reliable sources that are known to have a bias? You all are bashing the GAO reports because they include statistics about all immigrants. Well, many of the studies often used to cite the illegal immigrant crime rate statistics also include both legal and illegal immigrants. As I've already said, the statistics in the GAO reports are not fully representative of all crimes committed by all illegal aliens; no studies are, for that matter. I'm not going to go search for every single study that contradicts the results of the current sources in the article; that would be against policy. However, I'm not certain that this subject has yet been settled 100%. From what I can tell, it is well established that there is no correlation between illegal immigrants and crime, but overall national statistics are not necessarily an accurate reflection of what goes on in, say, individual states or communities. Compared to many issues, this topic has actually received very little attention, and the vast majority of it has come in the last four years since the announcement of Donald Trump's candidacy. I can, however, find many reliable and merited sources that criticize many studies conducted on this subject as being flawed. Can we at least admit that there are some problems with all studies conducted on this subject? It is a well known fact that crimes are underreported and that no one even knows how many people are in the US illegally. Bneu2013 (talk) 02:23, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

So I was edit warring even though I was the first one reverted and no consensus was yet achieved more or less, yes. You wanted to make a change. It's on you to get other people on board before reinstating it. If you just put it back in, that's edit warring, yes. Thank you for restoring uncontroversial parts of your edits, and my apologies for not doing so myself. Will take another look at the substance of this later. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:35, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I tried to discuss and no one replied. At first Snooganssnoogans was not discussing this on the talk page, and only placing vague statements in edit summaries. See my edit summaries ([6],[7], [8]). I immediately placed a notice above after I placed the neutrality tag on the article, and that still has yet to be discussed. Bneu2013 (talk) 02:58, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Also, the Relationship between immigration status and crime is a near copy-paste of Illegal immigration to the United States#Relationship between illegal immigration and crime. Bneu2013 (talk) 03:01, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

EDIT - I'm pretty much done fooling around here, yet I think the article is still slightly biased. If I could find a reliable source(s) that suggest that these studies are flawed or inaccurate, would that be acceptable for the article? Bneu2013 (talk) 03:55, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Anecdotes about the horrors of sanctuary cities

The article is full of anecdotes of individual crime related to sanctuary cities. This misleadingly gives the impression that sanctuary cities lead to crime, which all existing research disputes. All these anecdotes should be dropped. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 12:48, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Sanctuary cities do not lead to crime, and nothing in the article implies that. They are, however, controversial. Bneu2013 (talk) 18:53, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Every Illegal Immigrant Has Broken The Law

Why does the article ignore the fact that, by definition, EVERY illegal immigrant has violated U.S. law by entering and/or remaining in the United States illegally? GlassBones (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Illegal entry is a misdemeanor. The text that you're edit-warring to the article is also written in an argumentative way, and is entirely unsourced. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:43, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Illegal immigration to the United States which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 21:32, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

First sentence

The first sentence of this article reads “The issue … is a topic that is often asserted by more conservative politicians …”. This is not idiomatic English; one does not “assert a topic”. The sentence would be idiomatic if the word “asserted” were replaced by “discussed”. But I’m not sure if this would have the intended semantics (since I can’t tell what the sentence, in its current state, is supposed to mean). Homogeneous Cow (talk) 07:41, 19 December 2024 (UTC)