Donald Trump’s Arguments About Immigrants And Crime Are Based On Lies

Contrary to what Donald Trump claims, immigrants are less likely to commit crime than others.

Donald Trump Speaking Closeup

With Donald Trump once again reviving decades old fears about immigrants, legal and otherwise, committing crimes, Jason Riley of The Manhattan Institute reminds us that there is no evidence whatsoever that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes:

[N]umerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated. A new reportfrom the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, “FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.”

A separate IPC paper from 2007 explains that this is not a function of well-behaved high-skilled immigrants from India and China offsetting misdeeds of Latin American newcomers. The data show that “for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants,” according to the report. “This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”

It also holds true in states with large populations of illegal residents. A 2008 report by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants are underrepresented in the prison system. “The incarceration rate for foreign-born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared [with] 813 per 100,000 for U.S.-born adults,” the study concludes. “The foreign-born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population.”

High-profile incidents, like the recent arrest of a Mexican national in the horrific shooting death of a young woman in San Francisco, can give the impression that immigrants are more likely to commit violent crimes. But the alleged killer is no more representative of Mexican immigrants than Dylann Roof is representative of white people.

Every immigrant here illegally has already broken a law, though that doesn’t mean they are predisposed to crime. In a 2005 paper, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported that more recently arrived immigrants are even less crime-prone than their predecessors. In 1980 the incarceration rate of foreign nationals was about one percentage point below natives. A decade later that had fallen to a little more than a percentage point, and by 2000 it was almost three percentage points lower.

There are likely several reasons why recent immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people who are citizens or who have been in the United States many years. For many, the prospect of running afoul of the legal system and thus endangering their ability to stay in the United States to begin with likely leads them to avoid criminal activity to begin with. Additionally, to the extent that many of these people spend their first years in the United States working perhaps multiple jobs in an effort to support themselves and family members and perhaps provide the means for other family members to come to the United States means that their priorities are directed toward productive activities rather than crime. If they are lucky enough to already have family in the United States or be accepted into a wider community of immigrants from their country of origin, Indeed, it is likely the case that many of the immigrants who are drawn in to a life of crime are those who are unable to find steady work and a community that they are attached to and thus find themselves drifting into less savory activities. Then, of course, there are a handful of people like the Mexican national in San Francisco, but there are plenty of those types of people in the population as a whole and no reason to believe that this person’s status as an illegal immigrant had anything to do with his criminal history.

These facts, and the studies that Riley cites in his column but the lie to the claims that Donald Trump, along with conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, and others who have spent years demonizing immigrants, legal and illegal, and making a lot of money doing it. The difference between Trump and the pundits, of course, is that Trump is at least ostensibly running for President, is currently leading in the polls, and is, according to other polls, becoming considerably more acceptable to some Republican voters. The fact that he is doing so based largely on rhetoric that is full of lies and based in bigotry is really something that ought to cause a lot more concern than it seems to be right, probably because most people, myself included, don’t take Trump seriously as a Presidential candidate. Serious candidate or not, though, he is saying things that some segment of the public is reacting to positively. The fact that it’s all based on lies is something that ought to be made more clear by the media and by the people running against him.

FILED UNDER: 2016 Election, Borders and Immigration, Crime, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. J-Dub says:

    I heard Trump on Morning Joe this morning say that he has “five sources” backing up his claim that the Mexican government is sending convicted criminals to the US. When pressed, he would not reveal any of the five sources.

  2. Mu says:

    Sounds like Ted Cruz is getting ready to take over that line of thought when Trump bows out. Don’t have to “prove” anything if you’re just quoting Trump.

  3. Nikki says:

    Serious candidate or not, though, he is saying things that some segment of the public is reacting to positively. The fact that it’s all based on lies is something that ought to be made more clear by the media and by the people running against him.

    Doug, haven’t you been paying attention? It doesn’t matter that it’s all lies because it’s what the GOP base believes and wants to hear. Any GOP candidate spouting the same racist rhetoric will become golden in the eyes of the base.

    Even if the media takes the time to point out all the lies, the base will dismiss it as more liberalism from the MSM because the base is primarily racist and, when it comes to the election, racism from the GOP candidates will sell.

  4. gVOR08 says:

    Usual news – water – wet line.

  5. Tyrell says:

    Well, Senor Chapo has escaped in one of the most bizarre escapes in history. Seems like there was a tunnel complete with fresh air and electric lights, right under his cell ! Imagine that ! He is probably already across the border by now in his private plane. This man was named “public enemy number one” by the FBI. Wonder how many Mexican prison and government officials have now left to their beach home on some island ?
    Breaking news: an unidentified plane has been spotted heading towards San Francisco ! Senor Chapo has a multimillion dollar price on his head. How do those sanctuary laws out there sound now ?

  6. Mikey says:

    Trump et al. are just spouting the same bigoted, nativist bullshit my grandparents had to deal with when they got off the boat in 1927. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now, but it has appeal to people for whom baseless fears are the foundation of political alignment.

  7. Joe says:

    @J-Dub: Putting aside his ridiculous claims about the character of Mexican immigrants, does anybody else find it odd that Trump is arguing that the Mexican government is actively “sending” these people, as if the Mexican government were taking these people out of their jails and dropping them by the border and telling them to run north? Does even the Republican base believe that the Mexican government is behind this?

  8. Tony W says:

    @Tyrell: I can’t imagine how scary it must be inside your head. I am seriously sympathetic.

  9. Rafer Janders says:

    Donald Trump’s Arguments About Immigrants And Crime Are Based On Lies

    You know, you could just use this as a macro for pretty much any issue that a Republican contender is going to address over the next year and a half:

    [GOP Candidate’s] Arguments About [___] And [____] Are Based On Lies

  10. Rafer Janders says:

    @J-Dub:

    I heard Trump on Morning Joe this morning say that he has “five sources” backing up his claim that the Mexican government is sending convicted criminals to the US. When pressed, he would not reveal any of the five sources.

    “I have here in my hand a list….”

  11. LWA says:

    some segment of the public is reacting to positively.

    “Some segment”, AKA, the true beating heart of the Republican base.

    Donald Trump is who they are, and who they want to be.

  12. Paul L. says:

    I doubt the numerous studies he cites break down the nationality or legal status of immigrants.

    I’ll bet the 9/11 hijackers or Poor 99%er undocumented US citizen Francisco Sanchez are not considered immigrants in the studies.

  13. stonetools says:

    The fact that it’s all based on lies is something that ought to be made more clear by the media and by the people running against him.

    I think, Doug, that you fall into a common trap when you talk about the “media” as if it only included mainstream newspapers and the Big Three TV networks-the so called “mainstream media.” That world is past . As you yourself noted above, there is now a thriving conservative media, that makes big bucks telling a huge conservative audience what they want to hear.They have created an alternate reality where Donald Trump is the truth teller and folks like you are sheep who need to wake up! and stop listening to the pablum pushed by the “lame stream media”.
    I think the Donald Trump phenomenon, if it persists, should prompt liberals to wonder whether it was wise to drop the “fairness doctrine” back in the 1980s. Liberals imagined a fair “marketplace of ideas” that would not be distorted by money. They didn’t imagine that you could make tons of money telling a conservative audience an undiluted stream of lies that they wanted to hear and that telling complicated truths was rather unprofitable.
    Bottomline-three decades of conservative race baiting, immigrant bashing and talk of brown people “invading the United States” has prepared an audience for Trump.He’s just playing to that audience for as long as he can . A professional politician with a smoother approach like Ted Cruz could probably do much, much better.
    When I look at Trump and Cruz, I think of George Wallace and Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon said in smooth and indirect fashion what George Wallace said crudely and directly-and it was Nixon who went on to the Presidency.

  14. michael reynolds says:

    I am concerned to see that Doug has clearly joined the Republican Dump Trump band. . . Okay, not a bandwagon exactly. He’s joined the Dump Trump gaggle? The Dump Trump meander? The Dump Trump handwringing circle?

    In any case, it’s not fair or right.

    So to counter the awesome and unfair power of the Dump Trump, er, subreddit, I believe Democrats, acting purely out of a sense of fairness and with no self-serving or entertainment objective in mind, should launch their own Save The Donald bandwagon. We can get an actual bandwagon behind that.

  15. Moosebreath says:

    @Nikki:

    “Even if the media takes the time to point out all the lies, the base will dismiss it as more liberalism from the MSM because the base is primarily racist and, when it comes to the election, racism from the GOP candidates will sell.”

    And the chance of the So-Called Liberal Media doing so is vanishingly small. At most, they will do a “Both Sides Disagree on the Shape of the Earth” type story.

  16. Franklin says:

    Playing devil’s advocate here, but could the “lower crime rate than natives” be at least partially explained by the difficulty in locating suspects who are here illegally? In other words, since they are undocumented, it’s kind of hard to find their address.

    No, I don’t know why I’m trying to find excuses for Trump’s ridiculous rhetoric. I guess I’m just curious at how these statistics are arrived at.

  17. CSK says:

    @michael reynolds:

    And in terms of Trump himself, would that entail putting the horse’s ass before the cart?

  18. Dave D says:

    @Franklin: The police who are charged with solving crimes determine a person’s legal status at the time of arrest in order to identify them and check if they have any outstanding warrants.

  19. al-Ameda says:

    @Tyrell:

    Breaking news: an unidentified plane has been spotted heading towards San Francisco ! Senor Chapo has a multimillion dollar price on his head. How do those sanctuary laws out there sound now ?

    Chapo is already priced out of the San Francisco real estate market, he’d be better off in Mississippi or Alabama.

  20. Pete S says:

    @Joe: Joe, that thought occurred to me as well. That part of Trump’s thought process alone would tell any thinking person that he is just spouting nonsense. Which says a lot about his supporters I guess

  21. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Serious candidate or not, though, he is saying things that some segment of the public is reacting to positively. The fact that it’s all based on lies is something that ought to be made more clear by the media and by the people running against him.

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH…. 10,000 unemployed comedians Doug, and here you are giving it away for free. Which media Doug? FOX? The network that has lying to misinforming their audience and playing to the lowest common denominator as the twin pillars upon which their business rests? One of the other networks trying to cut into FOX’s ratings? And which politicians? None of the other Republicans dare call him a lying sack of sh1t because that would alienate the 27% with out which they can not win the nomination.

    Hillary? Oh, she will, but not until Trump has dragged the GOP willingly into the cesspool of their ignorance and hatred.

  22. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Tyrell:

    How do those sanctuary laws out there sound now ?

    A hell of a lot better than Texas gun laws.

  23. John says:

    But per data available at the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s web site, in 2013 38% of federal convictions were of illegal immigrants, and nearly 43% were legal or illegal immigrants.” Given ~11 million immigrants, that’s a hell of a lot of convictions of illegals vs legal.

    Besides, what ever happened to “if you save even one life, you are saving the whole world”?

    #Trump2016

  24. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    Trump’s a scammer. But right now, he’s a useful scammer.

    1) The “birther” idiocy was a tremendous asset to the left. It did Obama far more good than harm. Trump killed that off. And, as Doug gleefully noted a few days ago, Trump’s not interested in it any more now that it’s dead — no matter how much the left wants to keep bringing it back.

    2) Trump is bringing up the illegal immigrant problem and putting it front and center. As noted in the Washington Post, since Obama took office, 121 illegal aliens with felony convictions were released from custody and then killed an American citizen. That’s one every twelve days. And that’s not just “killed by an illegal alien,” but “killed by an illegal alien who had already been convicted of a felony, arrested again, and released instead of deported.”

    And as noted elsewhere, Obama had plenty to say about the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray were killed. Why didn’t he have anything to say when Kathryn Steinle was killed. And this has “federal issues” written all over it — she was allegedly killed by an illegal alien who had already been deported five times, who had a lengthy criminal record, who was subject to an ICE hold order but was released by police anyway, and was shot with a gun registered to a federal officer.

    3) Trump is a wonderful flak-catcher. He’s drawing a lot of the fire that the press and the left (but I repeat myself) would normally be heaping on the GOP candidates. And even better, Trump is the sort who can just blissfully ignore it.

    No, that’s not fair. Trump thrives on it. If any other GOP candidate had used a stock photo of soldiers that turned out to be Nazis, they’d be done for. Trump? Nah. I find myself wondering why the hell the stock image company didn’t properly label the soldiers as Nazis, and not just as generic “marching soldiers.” Either that, or someone in Trump’s campaign was trying to sabotage him.

    Here’s a simple, common-sense suggestion for illegal aliens: if an illegal alien is arrested AND they have either been previously deported OR they have at least one felony conviction, they get deported immediately. Further, in the spirit of the Obama administration’s stance on Arizona’s illegal alien law, where they said that local authorities have NO business in getting involved in immigration law, “sanctuary cities” are no more and any city that refuses to cooperate with federal officials on immigration law loses any and all federal law enforcement funding and aid.

    That’s not too unreasonable, is it?

  25. humanoid.panda says:

    #Trump2016

    As a liberal, nothing terrifies me more than Trump 2016! Please, send all the money and effort you can for his campaign, as it totally drives us into despair.

  26. John says:

    Speaking of Sanctuary Cities, whenever the concept of “nullification” comes up, it’s always in reference to what some republican or conservative said, and it’s nearly universally panned as a Bad Thing.

    Yet, with these sanctuary cities, we have liberals publicly and proudly ignoring–nullifying–federal law, and these same people don’t say a word.

  27. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @John: That’s different, you racist!

  28. Neil Hudelson says:

    @John:

    As a liberal I’m against sanctuary cities.

    Great!

    Now, are we done punching that strawman?

  29. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @Neil Hudelson: As a liberal I’m against sanctuary cities.

    Great!

    Now, are we done punching that strawman?

    When the “sanctuary cities” have had their sanctuary policies struck down, then we’ll consider the horse we’re beating to be dead. But getting a few random people to say “yeah, that’s bad” don’t achieve anything. Was it enough for people to say that Arizona’s SB 1070 was bad, or did it have to be struck down in courts before people left it alone?

  30. C. Clavin says:

    Trump is a Republican. The entire Republican agenda is built on lies. So what’s the issue?

  31. stonetools says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    He’s drawing a lot of the fire that the press and the left (but I repeat myself)

    1985 called and it wants its wing nut talking point back. As has been pointed out, there’s a hell of a lot of right wing media around now and a big chunk of it is cheering Trump on.

    Sanctuary cities, eh? Another 1980s throwback. I’ve never heard of sanctuary cities outside of liberal religious leaders defending the concept in the 1980s and conservatives objecting to it in 2015.Can you link to a Democratic Presidential candidate endorsing the concept? I’ll wait….

  32. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @John:

    38% of federal convictions were of illegal immigrants,

    Hmmmm… Not to be pedantic but I feel the need to ask, convicted of what? Being in the country illegally? Who’da thunk it!

  33. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @stonetools: Can you link to a Democratic Presidential candidate endorsing the concept? I’ll wait….

    We don’t need anyone to defend it, just listen to the deafening silence about talking about it at all.

    As I pointed out, the principles behind the Obama administration’s going after Arizona’s SB 1070 are exactly the same when it comes to “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco, who assert that they have the right to enforce their own immigration laws and policies above the federal government.

    Earlier this year, Obama’s hand-picked ICE head, Sarah Saldana, was asked by Congress if they needed to clarify that local governments did NOT have the right to ignore federal immigration laws. She said “Thank you. Amen. Yes.” But within 24 hours, she totally reversed herself and said that the current “ambiguity” was a good thing and totally essential that things remain ambiguous.

    If Obama had a problem with sanctuary cities, he could get rid of those policies with a stroke of his pen. But his hand-picked representatives in the positions to act upon them aren’t acting.

    That says all one needs to know.

  34. humanoid.panda says:

    @Neil Hudelson:

    As a liberal I’m against sanctuary cities.

    Sanctuary cities as ideological principle are hugely problematic, to say the least. However, minimizing the interaction between local police and emigration enforcement serves an important policing function: you are not going to get the community to interact with the police, when people know that interacting with the police might get them one way ticket out of town, by landing them on all sorts of lists that might end up on an ICE officer desk. Conservatives realize that principle when it comes to gun registries, but it somehow eludes them when it comes to immigration. Shocking, I know.

  35. C. Clavin says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:
    So in answer to Stonetools question – no.
    You could have just typed that.

  36. wr says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13: “We don’t need anyone to defend it, just listen to the deafening silence about talking about it at all.”

    And by extension, since no Democratic candidates are talking about extermination camps for Christians, that proves they’re in favor of them.

    Ladies and gentlemen, troll logic at its finest.

  37. humanoid.panda says:

    @wr:

    And by extension, since no Democratic candidates are talking about extermination camps for Christians, that proves they’re in favor of them.

    Ladies and gentlemen, troll logic at its finest.

    As much as it pains me, this is a bad analogy, in the sense that sanctuary cities exist, and Christian concentration camps don’t..

  38. stonetools says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    That says all one needs to know.

    Maybe all you need to know, mate. But us reality based folk like explicit statements, rather than guesses and projection.

    Note that, until about an hour ago, I did not know your position on sanctuary cities. Should I have assumed you were in favor of them, since (so far as I know) you hadn’t taken an explicit position against them?

  39. superdestroyer says:

    In doing a little ctrl-f reading of the entire report, the term mafia, MS=13, or gang were not used once and the term DUI was only used once.

    It is nice to know that academics have decided that MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia do not really exist even though the Washington Post has had several stories of MS-13 members arrested for murder in just the DC area. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/ms-13-members-charged-in-3-killings-attempted-murder/2014/10/17/64e0c57c-5628-11e4-ba4b-f6333e2c0453_story.html

    I guess that to admit that criminal gangs made of of immigrants would exist while the crime rate is going down would be to admit that those gangs somehow took the place of gangs made up of American citizens.

    Also, I find it odd that while progressives are claiming that the number one cause of death of young black men is white police officers that they now want to venture into the arena of arguing about crime statistics.

  40. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @stonetools: If you like, assume away.

    But here we have Obama’s point woman on the issue saying that they’re a problem, and then in 24 hours completely reversing herself — and no one else in the administration saying otherwise.

    The obvious conclusion is that her initial statement was her personal beliefs, and someone above her stepped on her and made her issue that reversal. And as that was the last official word from an Obama administration official, then it can be assumed to be the current policy.

  41. humanoid.panda says:

    @superdestroyer:

    It is nice to know that academics have decided that MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia do not really exist even though the Washington Post has had several stories of MS-13 members arrested for murder in just the DC area. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/ms-13-members-charged-in-3-killings-attempted-murder/2014/10/17/64e0c57c-5628-11e4-ba4b-f6333e2c0453_story.html

    By the same token, the Yakuza existing makes Tokyo a criminal hell-hole, right?

    Also, I find it odd that while progressives are claiming that the number one cause of death of young black men is white police officers that they now want to venture into the arena of arguing about crime statistics.

    Liar.

  42. superdestroyer says:

    @humanoid.panda:

    Even Outsidethebeltway has had a post about the talk that black families have with their sons about how dangerous it is to interact with the police. If the police were not the number one cause of death of young black men, then why do they need special training on how to deal with such a massive risk of death?

    Of course, when those posts are made, I always point out that blacks are much more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites and I am always called a liar and in error.

  43. superdestroyer says:

    If immigrant criminal gangs have killed people but the argument is that they do not increase the crime rate, then the argument is that those murders, assaults, rapes, etc would have happened anyway but would have been committed by citizens.

    I find to understand how that logic works in an academic setting.

  44. wr says:

    @humanoid.panda: “As much as it pains me, this is a bad analogy, in the sense that sanctuary cities exist, and Christian concentration camps don’t..”

    Apparently you aren’t reading the right websites…

  45. michael reynolds says:

    I have one thing to say to all the Trump defenders upstream. It’s a quote from Barack Obama:

    “Please proceed.”

  46. Pete S says:

    @superdestroyer:

    Even Outsidethebeltway has had a post about the talk that black families have with their sons about how dangerous it is to interact with the police. If the police were not the number one cause of death of young black men, then why do they need special training on how to deal with such a massive risk of death?

    I hate to respond to this, but what does that even mean? I have never seen an article here suggesting that police are the only threat to Black men, or even the biggest threat.

    Do you have kids? Do you only teach them about one danger? I assume my daughter is smart enough that I can teach her to look both ways before she crosses the street as well as not getting in cars with strangers as well as not going in the pool by herself as well as not poking a beehive with a stick along with many other things. Some dangers are bigger or more prevalent, but as a responsible parent (I hope) I try to hit them all. Telling her not to get in a car with a stranger doesn’t mean that is the only thing I talk to her about, or that it is the only or biggest danger she faces.

    And why would you bring up this unrelated issue about a completely different minority group in a discussion about a Republican candidate’s lies about immigration.

  47. Lou Zimmer says:

    @stonetools: The liberal media rules. The conservative media makes money. Why is that? This country whether you like it or not is center right. You can demonize conservatives all you want, we have long since figured out your playbook. Keep repeating the lies d-bags. A change is coming.

  48. wr says:

    @Lou Zimmer: “Keep repeating the lies d-bags. A change is coming.”

    Hmm, which change would that be?

    Legalization of gay marriage across the country? Nope, that’s here.

    Guaranteed health care for all Americans, with subsidies for those who can’t afford it (in states without Republican governors)? Nope, that’s here.

    An international agreement ending Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb? That seems to be here as well.

    So what should we look for next?

  49. humanoid.panda says:

    @superdestroyer:

    Even Outsidethebeltway has had a post about the talk that black families have with their sons about how dangerous it is to interact with the police. If the police were not the number one cause of death of young black men, then why do they need special training on how to deal with such a massive risk of death?

    You do realize that what you are saying makes no logical sense whatsoever,right? I presume people in Florida brief their kids to not play with alligators. Does this mean that alligators are the no.1 cause of death of Florida children?

  50. humanoid.panda says:

    @Lou Zimmer:

    The liberal media rules. The conservative media makes money. Why is that? This country whether you like it or not is center right.

    If what you say is true, then the necessary logical implication is that this is a center-left, not center-right country. (To make money, you only need to reach a small group of people, if your expenses are low enough. To “rule” you need to reach 50%+1 of the public.) What is it with trolls and their lack of basic training in logic today?

  51. Lou Zimmer says:

    @humanoid.panda: You are not logical at all. A news station that draws ratings will generate more revenue. To keep the people who bring the ratings you will have to pay them more. See CNN or MSNBC and there constant restructuring. In your mind they are a success. We live in the real world however, not a drug induced delusion. Your name sounds like a bad acid trip. What is it with liberals and their willful ignorance.

  52. Cyberats says:

    @michael reynolds: @J-Dub:
    Fact is Castro did send criminals on purpose, could anyone prove that ?
    Even if you cannot prove it, what is the likelihood that someone escaping border checks does so because they are wanted criminals or smuggling ? (hint: very high)
    Republicans are Fascists, Democrats are Communists, both want your money, work, health, lifetime. Welcome to Homeland.
    The hidden truth is that Corporations kept the borders wide open for the last 60+ years abusing not only South American & Middle American people but ALL illegal immigrants. Paying them half the minimum wages at times, no healthcare or retirement benefits. (Corporations paid the mafia to eliminate pre-paid healthcare altogether now, so we all work for minimum wages only, even at qualified, educated jobs.)
    The second part has to do with the U.S. Senate Drug cartel and their war on Independent dealers & growers, as well as human traffickers. You see, middle “made men” mafia hates competition.
    Those are two main reasons we got “illegal immigrants” as a law in the first place. There was never an intent nor any provision made to stop them.

  53. humanoid.panda says:

    @Cyberats:

    The second part has to do with the U.S. Senate Drug cartel and their war on Independent dealers & growers, as well as human traffickers. You see, middle “made men” mafia hates competition.

    At least, they didn’t stop you from getting your hands on whatever you just smoked.

  54. Lou Zimmer says:

    @wr: Its darkest before the dawn. The dawn of smaller government will be a start. The dawn of self determination, not a so called guaranteed outcome from your friendly government. The American spirit isn’t having your hand out. No guarantees. Work hard and if you fail get up dust yourself off and try again. I know this is totally foreign to you manginas. Our current course is not sustainable, period.

  55. michael reynolds says:

    @Lou Zimmer:

    Dude, all media nowadays is niche. I make money selling books to a relative handful of teenagers. Fox “news” makes money selling lies to octogenarian imbeciles and gun-clutching paranoids. CNN makes money boring people in airports. OTB presumably makes some money providing a forum for intelligent people to instruct right-wing ninnies in the facts of life.

    Look at every social issue. Who is winning? Liberals. Across the board. Social conservatives have done nothing but lose. The country has evolved. were some elements of the media helpful? Yes. Is a liberal media conspiracy responsible for something like the majority support for same sex marriage? Look, as a Democrat I very much want you people to go on believing that, but it just ain’t true. You lost because you had exactly zero compelling arguments to make. You lost by virtue of cluelessness and blatant bigotry that sickened the American people.

    But hey, tell yourself all the lies you need to make yourself feel good. It would be uncharitable to deny a loser his rationalizations.

  56. humanoid.panda says:

    @Lou Zimmer:

    We live in the real world however, not a drug induced delusion. Your name sounds like a bad acid trip. What is it with liberals and their willful ignorance.

    No doubt, you know much more about acid trips than me, but I suspect you don’t know much about anything else. Yes, Fox News is profitable and is the most watched cable news show. However, as you yourself say the liberal media “rules”: the audience for network news, NPR, major websites, and newspapers all dwarf the viewership of cable news. Since you presume they all are liberal, that must imply the nation is center-left,right?

  57. David M says:

    @Lou Zimmer:

    WTF is that even supposed to mean? How does that word salad even relate to any actual policies?

  58. LWA says:

    @Lou Zimmer:
    I love this, the distillation of political philosophy into bromides and platitudes.

    Its like liberals going around saying something like:

    The dawn of cooperation, not every man for himself. The American spirit is people forming communities that work together in mutual respect. No infighting or division. Work hard and it will be rewarded, and if you fail you will be given a second chance.

    But of course platitudes are just that, empty and without form.
    We want individual freedom, but also a social order.
    We want accountability, but responsibility.
    A private sphere, protected by socialized police power.

  59. stonetools says:

    @Lou Zimmer:

    The liberal media rules. The conservative media makes money. Why is that?

    This is actually a better question than you know, and one which I took a stab at explaining above. There is a mainstream media that is not in fact wholly liberal but is aimed at all audiences and which bends over backward to be fair to all sides. The result is that the commentary and reporting tends to be of the “some say round earth, some flat earth: who can say?” variety. Rarely is there a full blooded defense of any liberal position and when its presented the conservative viewpoint is always respectfully presented also, even if completely ludicrous. ( Frequently on the supposedly liberal Sunday morning shows the majority of the pundits are conservative).
    Besides this mainstream media is a conservative media that presents an unabashedly conservative viewpoint all day, every day, without even an attempt at fairness or balance. Business has found this to be hugely profitable, because apparently conservatives will pay to be told only what they want to hear all day, every day, all year long. (For whatever reason, this model doesn’t seem to work for liberals).
    So there you have it. Needless to say, none of this proves the country is “center-right”, whatever that means.

  60. grumpy realist says:

    @Lou Zimmer: The conservative media is also not just the media but an unholy conglomeration of think tanks, radio talk shows, pundits, talk-show-hosts-turned-politicians, authors, politicians-turned talk-talk-show-hosts, and junk mail purveyors, all living off the sort of people who can be spooked to sign up to have $50 a month taken from their bank account because “COMMUNISTS!”. Fox News is just one more sales force of that crowd. As long as the grifters can make money off you or your parents by telling you what you want to hear, they’ll do it–whether it be selling you seeds to store for the Apocalypse, gold coins for after the Apocalypse, or a buried air-raid shelter to keep you from the zombies. You are meat on the hoof for them and as long as you keep cashing out, they’ll keep feeding you the dope your brain craves.

  61. Kylopod says:

    @Lou Zimmer:

    This country whether you like it or not is center right.

    Consider the following hypothetical: Let’s say that next week, a new candidate jumps into the Republican race. This candidate immediately comes out in favor of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, says he supports the Iran deal, agrees with the recent Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage and Obamacare, wants taxes on the wealthy to go up, wants the minimum wage raised, and opposes any cuts to Social Security or Medicare.

    Would you start screaming this candidate is a RINO traitor before I even finished the paragraph? Does a bear **** in the woods? Is the Pope Catholic? (Actually, forget that last metaphor–we all know the current Pope is a CINO if we ever saw one!)

    Well, as it turns out, this isn’t hypothetical at all. The figure I described actually exists, only it isn’t a candidate for the GOP nomination. Rather, it is something called the American public.

    Examine any public opinion polls and you will almost invariably find the public in favor of all the positions of this hypothetical candidate.

    Does this refute your claim that America is a “center-right” nation? Not at all. The American public does in fact strongly support the positions of the country’s center-right political party: the Democratic Party.

  62. stonetools says:

    @David M:

    Hey, conservatives don’t do policy. I always find it amazing that conservatives unironically present their anti-government screeds on a technology invented by… government. It’s always “what have the Romans ever done for us” with conservatives.

  63. superdestroyer says:

    @Pete S:

    All you have to do is google the the Talk Black Families and you millions of hits. Judging by the massive number of these articles, it is obvious that blacks see whites as the biggest danger in their lives even though a black 20-something is something like 15 times more likely to be killed by another black person.

    When you look at the social media and MSM response to when a black is killed by a whites versus a black is killed by another black or a Latino, what other conclusion can one reach except to believe that progressives believe that the biggest threat to blacks are whites.

  64. stonetools says:

    Jenos:

    The obvious conclusion is that her initial statement was her personal beliefs, and someone above her stepped on her and made her issue that reversal.

    SD:

    Judging by the massive number of these articles, it is obvious that blacks see whites as the biggest danger in their lives

    Don’t you just love the way conservatives use the word “obvious” to describe “unfounded speculation that I (or some right wing pundit) came up with?”

  65. Tony W says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    But getting a few random people to say “yeah, that’s bad” don’t achieve anything.

    Isn’t that your response when Palin/Trump/Bachmann/whomever acts like an idiot?

  66. Tony W says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    We don’t need anyone to defend it, just listen to the deafening silence about talking about it at all.

    So liberal silence about, say, goat blood stew is similarly some sort of scandal that must be addressed? I’m not tracking your logic brother.

  67. Grumpy Realist says:

    @humanoid.panda: yes, one reason why you want to make certain that things like medical treatment never result in someone being reported.

  68. Thomas Weaver says:

    The horror of it all – no validation, no referenced sources, no verification:
    Geeze, that sounds like 99% of all stories from the mainstream news media!

    Think about this: No scripted speeches and no teleprompters.
    Hey…He’s not a politician, so he can’t get a pass for some glossed over stats? It’s no wonder he ranks so high in polls. He’s definitely different from the other 17…18…or 19 other choices.

  69. Paul Hooson says:

    THE WASHINGTON POST has begun to look into Trump’s extensive use of immigrant workers in his businesses including in his hotels and elsewhere. THE WASHINGTON POST also suggests that Trump may be making some use of undocumented construction workers at one of his current construction sites.

    In other areas such as the Gay marriage debate, Trump claims to support “traditional marriage”. yet his own life has been characterized by cheating and adultery scandals that might have cost his businesses up the several billion dollars in financial losses.

    Why not elect a dishonest, lying and cheating powerful wealthy man, president? What has the country to lose? Russia has elected a similar sort of leader, and look at how well this has turned out…

  70. gVOR08 says:

    @Paul Hooson:

    Why not elect a dishonest, lying and cheating powerful wealthy man, president?

    That’s what we usually do.

  71. Andre Kenji de Sousa says:

    Yup. Luigi Zingales is right to compare Trump with Silvio Berlusconi.

  72. bill says:

    those stats are laughable at best- they’re so weighted it’s funny that you would bother using them in here.
    anyone who lives in a border state can read the paper ,10 most wanted lists, etc. and know the truth- how the survey crowd decides which data to use is the issue.

  73. Roddy says:

    I don’t know if these studies are true. The mere existence of tough as nails Mexican crime gangs controlling the entire drug market seems to prove the opposite.

    Another weird thing: for some reason, we are given only data for California….why not national data, folks? Of course we know the answer: there are so many legal Latinos populating the Cali prisons that these states only prove that the illegal Latinos, COMPARATIVELY, commit less crime than the legal ones.

    It only proves that perhaps being an illegal Latino can serve as a deterrent against committing crimes. The risk of deportation might keep many a Latino in check.

    So maybe legalization may not such a good idea…

    besides, why would bringing in ANY new criminal Latino, even when accompanied by 7 non-criminal Latinos, be a good idea?

    @bill: @bill:

  74. Roddy says:

    @Paul Hooson: @J-Dub:

    Looking up the NORTHERN California most wanted list I saw some white, some Asian and plenty of Latino names for drugs, pederasty and money laundering.

    The first ten murderers I encountered were Messrs. Barajas, Ramirez Cruz, Tapia Ramirez, Pliego, Garcia Martinez, Castellanos, Alvarado, all Latino obviously; a certain Namowics, of some kind of white ancestry apparently, and two African Americans, Hill and Brooks.

    Legal or illegal, the story doesn’t say, but the fact is that Latinos are overrepresented in crime, judging from the Northern Cali police most wanted list.

    It is strange world where citizens have to check facts to correct media spin, but here we are.

    From one citizen to another, have a nice day!

    check familysecuritymatters for additional information.

  75. Knave Dave says:

    Everyone tries to make immigration concerns about race. It has nothing to do with race. No matter how white the person is who comes illegally across the border, I want him deported because he is here illegally. Maybe he broke the law to get here because he wants to steal one of our jobs. Maybe he broke the law to get here because he’s a criminal so he doesn’t care about breaking the law. It doesn’t matter. He’s here, and he’s not supposed to be.

    And, if he can get into the country when he is not supposed to so can other people who are more highly motivated because of their hatred for America. You cannot possibly be safe from ISIS if the government cannot keep that guy out, whoever he is, whatever race he is. It doesn’t matter why he’s here. It matters that the Obama administration doesn’t care that millions like him are here either. And who is hidden among those millions?

    Nor does it matter how many crimes illegal aliens commit or whether they commit any more crimes than legal aliens or any more crimes per capita than U.S. citizens. When the government releases a known illegal alien onto the street and doesn’t deport him as the law requires and he commits just one crime, that IS a crime that would not have been committed if the government had done its job and deported him. What is a crime is that the government doesn’t care to uphold the law.

    And that has NOTHING to do with race or hatred.

    I’ve written more about this at: http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/trump-politics/

    –Knave Dave

  76. Deserttrek says:

    they should not be here to begin with .. your argument is therefore manure