Presence of Immigrants Still Correlates With Low Crime!
It's pretty amazing that no matter how many times people point this out, no matter how many times local police say that Arizona's new immigration law is bad for them, apparently no one can hear it. The murder rate in a number of border towns-including San Diego, El Paso and Tuscon (which is not really a border town in the same way El Paso is)-actually dropped significantly from 2008 to 2009. In fact, El Paso and San Diego both made the most-recent top five list of large American cities with low violent crime rates. If you really crunch some numbers, you find that the states with the most "illegal immigrants" actually have the lowest per capita incidences of violent crime. (Now Philly: that's a place you don't want to be.) Even when you look at a longer time period than year-over-year, you see that Arizona has 15% less violent crime overall since 2006. This makes the insane ramblings of anti-immigration folks all the more annoying-especially because most of them are probably Irish people whose parents came here and took a job away from some real white person.
I sincerely hope some intrepid non-profit is currently investigating the familial roots of all the republican lawmakers in Arizona currently beating this anti-immigration war drum. How many are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation Americans? How many owe their citizenship to a parent or grandparent being a so-called "anchor baby." There's a particularly disgusting shade of "I got mine, now fuck you"-ism that runs through any person on an anti-immigration platform, unless that person happens to be an American Indian. It's Objectivism as immigration policy.
I'm so old, I remember when saying something like "We should send those people back to where their parents came from" would get you fired from your job.
Or kicked out of your front-row seat in the briefing room.
(… unless that was your joke, in which case, well played.)
I guess they're just too lazy to commit any crimes (except, of course, the crime of coming here to work hard and improve their lives).
Well played, sir. Well played.
(Semi-related, because this comment involves Pinatas)
My 5 year old niece does not a want a pinata for her birthday party because she does not want to be Mexican.
Thanks America!
The Vapors are to this day similarly skittish around sushi.
Only problem is she would not be turning, she is! we are. etc.
Ah! Misread! That is, how you say, some bullshit right there.
Haha. My Dad is an El Paso native, and most of the criminal activity I've heard about in his stories involved El Pasoans going across the border and getting into, ahem, situations. One of his most fight-prone Bros was half-Irish, if that answers your question.
Situations?!
they probably called it El Grande Shore!
Damned Papists. With their occultism.
these fact thingies continue to interfere with my god-given right to mine the border, patrol it with assault rifles, and shoot people. please either retract these factual assertions or devise a time machine that would allow me to fight in the american revolution like the true patriot i am.
Mines! I never thought of mines!
As a like-minded patriot, I have been dreaming of your American Revolution time machine mine entire life but was recently devastated to learn that the battles of Lexington and Concord were in two different cities, and not at a street intersection like I imagined. So it is impossible to time travel and fight in BOTH, because you can't be in two different places at the same time. One can never be the truest patriot :(
HG: Yes, mines are just like a wall only killier.
Good news – they did not happen at the same time! First the Redcoats marched to Lexington, where they had the first battle, then they marched on to Concord, where they had the second. Unfortunately, they started at, like, 6 in the morning, so if you are not a morning person, it could be tough.
Mines: the Silent Patriot.
@major disaster: If you're a night owl, just choose Paul Revere. Unless you're allergic to horses.
Thank you, major disaster, for restoring my patriotic archetype (assuming I can get over the time travel jet lag); now, if only you could resurrect Touchdown Jesus and restore my faith in god!
'Now Philly: that's a place you don't want to be.'
Where have you been?
I think our friend Cord Jefferson relied on some of these bogus BROWN PEOPLE KILL AND STEAL AND PLUNDER stories. But Cord writes so sensitively and introspectively — we'll give him a pass. Cord Jefferson, everybody!
Fun times: Arizona is trying to deny birth certificates to children of illegal immigrants born there.
Here is Union City, NJ. THE most densely populated city per square mile in the United States (yes, more than New York City), mostly recent immigrants. About 73 percent of the population is Spanish speaking.
http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/nj/union-city/crime/