Thread: On immigration, figures lie and liars figure

Sunday, March 16, 2008
On immigration, figures lie and liars figure
How do illegal immigrants – again, emphasis on "illegal" – stack up on crime? Let's look at some numbers in Orange County.
GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com Comments 10| Recommend 4

Do illegal immigrants commit more than their share of crimes?

According to a recent study that's been in the news, the answer is no. But if you look at crime statistics in Orange County, the answer can just as easily be yes.

For the sake of argument, let's dispense with the fact that every illegal immigrant in this country is, by definition, violating the law. Let's also set aside the fact that millions of illegal immigrants use fraudulent Social Security numbers to get work, which is also a crime. Instead, let's concentrate on crimes committed by U.S. citizens or legal residents and illegal immigrants alike – everything from murder to DUI to shoplifting.

The study mentioned above was published by the liberal Public Policy Institute of California. One of its seemingly startling conclusions is that U.S.-born men are statistically more than twice as likely to be incarcerated in prison as "foreign-born men" are – thus "proving" that immigrants are actually more law-abiding than non-immigrant U.S. citizens.

And that may be true when you're talking about "immigrants" in general, a vast population that includes everyone from World War II British war brides to Chinese-born math professors to illegal immigrant farm workers.

But the problem with the study – a problem that's common among pro-illegal immigration activists – is that it made no distinction between legal "foreign-born" residents and illegal immigrants. No one I know has ever suggested rounding up legal foreign-born citizens and residents and deporting them. The issue is people who are in this country illegally.

So how do illegal immigrants – again, emphasis on "illegal" – stack up on crime? Let's look at some numbers in Orange County.

For more than a year the Orange County Sheriff's Department has had specially-trained deputies screening county jail inmates for immigration status. Arrestees who are determined to be in this country illegally are detained and turned over to federal immigration authorities after their criminal cases are resolved.

Out of about 68,000 arrestees who were screened between Jan. 2007 and January of this year, 4,683 were found to be illegal immigrants, or about 7 percent of all screened arrestees. (About 3,000 of them had been arrested for non-immigration-related felonies, the rest for non-immigration misdemeanors.)

That 7 percent figure would seem to be in line with the overall population of illegal immigrants in the county. Of course, that population is hard to document – pardon the pun – but a 2007 report by the Urban Institute put the number of illegal immigrants in Orange County at about 220,000, or about 7 percent of the county population.

In other words, 7 percent of the population accounted for 7 percent of the people booked into the county jail system – which would mean that illegal immigrants are statistically no more or less likely to wind up in our county jail than citizens or legal residents.

But wait! Of the 4,683 illegal immigrants found in the jail, only a statistically insignificant 169 of them were women. So if you subtract the women from the illegal immigrant population, and you also subtract the estimated 16 percent who are children, it means that – hold on, let me consult my calculator here – it means that male illegal immigrants are arrested for crimes at a rate more than twice their percentage of the overall population.

So if we're concerned about crimes committed by illegal immigrants, the answer is obvious: Keep the women and deport the men.

Now, I'm being somewhat facetious here. The truth is that anyone can massage crime and immigration statistics to arrive at any desired conclusion.

But the question is, so what? What difference does it really make if illegal immigrants commit less or more of their "fair share" of street crimes? They're still breaking the law, and they're still creating an impoverished and widely abused and exploited underclass – and somehow that has to be resolved.

Meanwhile, the fact remains that because of stricter immigration enforcement, thousands of accused felons in the Orange County jail – not to mention more than 19,000 convicted non-citizen felons currently serving time in California state prisons – either have been deported or are facing deportation when the criminal legal system is done with them. And would anybody argue that this country isn't better off without them?

So be wary of researchers and advocates – and to be fair, newspaper writers – who toss statistics around to obscure the real issues. Because the old saying is true.

Sometimes figures lie.

And liars can certainly figure.


Contact the writer: 714-796-7953 or GLDillow@aol.com

http://www.ocregister.com/news/illegal- ... population

First article I have seen in a while by the OC Register that actually is somewhat critical of the illegal invaders.

However, Gordon did not take much of a risk in that the segment he uses to make his point is illegal invaders who have actually been convicted of a crime.

Virtually ever illegal invader in this country must get their hands on a fradulent or stolen SS number in order to work. Is this any less of a crime just because they have not been arrested and convicted of that crime. These people are going to engage in criminal activity in order to facilitate their stay in this country.

Lets see Gordon take a risk and make a case as to why ALL illegal invaders should be deported, irrespective if they are convicted criminals or not.