Thread: Immigration statistics linked to L.A. Times are a hoax

FYI:
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Los Angeles Times Blogs

Immigration statistics linked to Los Angeles Times are a hoax

We have received some responses to our post this morning about illegal immigration numbers that quote different figures -- figures that allegedly come from the Los Angeles Times.

Some examples of those figures:

1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County ( L.A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

Those figures are a hoax, which you can read about here on Snopes.com. [click on below link]

No article has appeared in The Times with this list. And some of these "facts" appear to have been misleadingly edited from articles that appeared in the L.A. Times as many as 20 years ago and are now being cited inappropriately. When this Internet rumor started last year, The Times' opinion website looked into this hoax; here is the link to what they found:

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/20 ... _neve.html

One example of the innacuracies is the claim that a Times story reported that "Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages." This appears to misquote information from a May 24, 1987, article about the number of people living in garages in Los Angeles County. It reported that, at that time, about 42,000 garages were sheltering about 200,000 immigrants in L.A. County. That article provided detailed information explaining how the figures were arrived at, but it did not allude to anyone's residency status.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Posted by Deborah Bonello on July 25, 2008 in Immigration

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza ... n-sta.html

It reported that, at that time, about 42,000 garages were sheltering about 200,000 immigrants in L.A. County. That article provided detailed information explaining how the figures were arrived at, but it did not allude to anyone's residency status.

ok, so they are basically sheltering a family of four in thier garages. I feel MUCH better now.

Oh heck, it works out to 4.76. Must be that anchor baby on the way and almost here!!!

95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

This was not proved to be a hoax. Snopes could not disprove it as they said the information was from a variety of sources and could be open to some interpretation. It was not disproven. In fact, this figure was put into Congressional testimony by Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute.

The entire paragraph that details this statement appears on page 77 of the Book, "The Immigration Solution" and in the City Journal article, "The Illegal Alien Crime Wave."

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens. The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave: City Journal, winter 2004 http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_t ... alien.html