OK. Sorry to turn to you guys for help, but I have an acquaintance who began to forward me virtually anything that comes into his inbox, and apparently whoever is forwarding them to him has issues with illegal immigrants. The screeds aren’t usually very imaginative, relying heavily on a formula consisting of “Here are some hazy “facts” concerning those dirty, dirty wetbacks. Now do you see that the beaners are ruining this country? Rah rah rah Ol’ Glory God Bless America.”
Pretty tiresome. Thus far, I have simply linked him to the Snopes article, reassured him that the Republic is in no real danger from illegals, and gone on my way. Unfortunately, any semblance of restraint he had is GONE, and he forwards me EVERYTHING now, usually with a “Hey man. You’re smart. What do you know about this?”
Groan. “This” sometimes consists of the most egregiously stupid 9/11 conspiracy theories, so you can see what I’m dealing with.
I don’t want to just shut him down 1) because I don’t want to offend him, since he is currently refinishing a personal possession of great personal value to me, and 2) I don’t want him to be stupid.
So anyway, here’s the latest one. Snopes has been no help on it, but it smells mighty fishy. Fighting Ignorance and all that. Seems like our charter. Can anyone help out? Thanks in advance.
Not much time right now, but even the numbers guy from the Wall Street Journal had to say that the pro or con positions really do not have reliable numbers:
Well, OnTheRadio lists sixteen Spanish radio stations in the greater LA area. It’s possible they missed some, but take a look at that list. It sounds like a lot, but there are a whole metric assload of radio stations in the greater LA area.
The study by Donald Huddle is total bullshit. It was never submitted for peer review or even formally published; his data and methods are not reviewable. Consider the Cato Institute’s discussion on the matter
Last I checked, the Cato Institute wasn’t exactly high on the list of the Evil Liberal America-Haters, either.
Hmmm… Out of curiosity does this friend actually want your opinion on the matter or are they trying to convince you that illegal aliens really are spawn of the devil? And also, were you able to confirm that the list ACTUALLY came from the LA Times, or was that simply what the e-mail stated?
OK, for #s 1, 4, 6, and 7… how is it possible to KNOW with any kind of certainty any of those things? I highly doubt they took a survey of the average person on the streets of L.A. consisting of the question: “Do you get paid in all cash? If yes, are you an illegal alien?” I find it even more unlikely that they took a survey of GANG MEMBERS and asked them if they were illegal…
For 2, 3, 5, and 8 I suppose it’s possible that they have cross-checked names against some database of legal aliens and U.S. citizens, but 1) why would they pay people to do such a time consuming job; what is the purpose? and 2) just because they are not on the “list” of “legal” people, does it always mean they are an illegal alien? (I actually don’t know the answer to that second part…anybody know?)
For 9 and 10… who cares? What’s the point? What difference does it make that there are a lot of Spanish-speaking or Spanish-radio-listening people? That ALWAYS means they are Mexicans who are here illegally?
Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t get the reference to 2% of illegal aliens picking crops but 29% on welfare… Are they proposing that one is not entitled to welfare if one is not a farmer…??
Is the welfare/government services and not paying tax thing necessarily unique to illegal aliens? Do other groups of people on welfare or in HUD housing always pay taxes that cover the services they use? Highly doubtful.
To the statement the professor-guy made… guess what… 100% of our growth since 1600 has been from immigration. Otherwise none of us would be here.
We’d have had hugely negative population growth (at least for a while) if the European explorers had turned around and gone home after they visited North America and no one immigrated from Europe. Disease wiped out 95% of some Native American populations after contact with Europeans.
There’s an unspoken assumption in this email that population growth is bad. Someone should tell that to the Japanese and the Europeans, and for that matter to the people in this country who are concerned about not having enough younger workers to support the Baby Boomers’ Social Security payments.
I think that if you have any Native American or mostly Native American friends, you should forward this email to them. They should reply- “Great- let’s get rid of all the illegal aliens, retroactive to 1492”
There’s another unspoken assumption in this email that anyone who lives in California and speaks Spanish is an illegal alien (in 9 and 10). Your acquaintance does know that California has belonged to Spain or Mexico for longer than it has belonged to the United States, right? He or she also knows that there are Latinos who have been in California since before it became part of the US, right? And that there are legal immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries? That being so, 9 and 10 might be true even if there were no illegal aliens in LA County.
If your acquaintance has an Irish, Italian, eastern European, Jewish, or Asian ethnic background, you might point out to him or her that these same kind of arguments were used against his or her ancestors when they wanted to immigrate to the United States.
My job is to research old newspapers/magazines/wire services for stories our customers would be interested in. We have access to all LA Times content back to 1985. Some of what the OP was given is true, some is merely opinion, and some seems to be flat-out false. Here is what I was able to come up with:
No relevant articles found.
From the May 15, 2005 L.A. Times opinion page by Carol Platt Liebau, listed as “an attorney, political analyst and guest host on KABC radio”:
“According to Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, 95% of the hundreds of outstanding homicide warrants (and 60% of outstanding felony warrants) in L.A. are for illegal immigrants.”
No relevant articles found.
October 21, 1995 article entitled Gingrich Offers to Fully Repay States on Immigrant Care; Health: Speaker’s plan would bring $400 million a year to California for emergency medical services to those here illegally. Wilson, L.A. County officials praise proposal: “Also, it is estimated that Medi-Cal will pay for 96,000 babies born to illegal immigrants this year.” Someone else can look up if that equals the 2/3rds number cited in the OP.
Another opinion page article. This one from the May 1, 2005 edition, by Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo, listed as “a Republican in his fourth term of representing Colorado’s 6th District and is chairman of the 78-member Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus”:
“More than 10% of the inmates in U.S. jails and prisons are illegal aliens, and in California it is more than 20%. In 2002, 33.6% of criminals sentenced in federal district courts were noncitizens.”
A March 15, 1989 article entitled Lawsuits Over Method Census Mired in Dispute Over Counting the Hidden Series: COUNTING AMERICA: Shaping the 1990 Census mentions both illegal immigrants living in garages and the 300,000 number. However 300,000 is the number of households they had to canvass in a post-census survey. No definitive number of garage-dwellers is given (although several articles do mention it is a large problem in SoCal).
From the same article cited in point #2:
“The National Youth Gang Center, a private group, estimates there are 100,000 gang members in L.A. County, and that illegal immigrants make up a substantial part of these gangs. Of the membership of the notorious 18th Street gang, estimated at 20,000, fully 60% are illegal aliens, according to a 1995 report by the state Department of Justice.”
A May 7, 1994 article estimates the number at “fewer than 1%”.
9 & 10. Since they’re both utterly pointless, I’m not searching for cites on these two.
WOW. Thank you guys so much for all the hard work and research. It’s things like this that make me realize what a remarkable place the Dope is (and I think you guys just convinced me to go ahead and re-up for the year.) I’ll tell my email buddy about all this. In addition, I wrote the LA Times and Snopes about it. At best, then, it seems like a hodgepodge of true, false, misleading, outdated (1989?), and irrelevant “facts” put together by someone with an agenda. That’s just about what I figured, and thank you guys so much for helping me out on this one.
Hal, Anne, Jackboots, jali, Jelymag, GIGO: you rule. If I’ve ever snarled at any of you in the Pit, please forgive me.
I believe the point they’re trying to make is that we hear all the time that the farm/agriculture industry would collapse or that the price of produce would go up anywhere from 200-1000% if they didn’t use illegal labor. The #'s would show that we’re paying out welfare to far more illegals than are actually doing that farm work.
Note, I’m not saying I agree or disagree with any of the above, or that I believe the numbers given are correct or incorrect since I have no data to support it one way or the other.
Well since gangs in LA can be Latino (the 60% number listed ) or African -American (probably citizens) Anglo (probably citizens), or Asian (A mixed bag, but probably mostly legal immigrants, and citizens) , I am going to call BS on 50% of all gang members in LA are illegal aliens from south of the border.
The percentages cited in the list sound conveniently round. Gives it minus points on the smell test in my book.
Also, how long is the “most wanted list”? Is it the ten most wanted? Well, then that means that 7.5 people are illegal immigrants. (So one of the top ten is half-legal, maybe?) If that report is accurate, are these ten people representative of all people with outstanding warrants?
When you’re tallying languages, how do you count someone who speaks both languages? (Or, Og forbid, more than two languages?) And what about people who speak other languages? And at what point do you count as speaking one language or the other?
Anyway…NPR had a story about the impact of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy. Here’s the link. The economists cited in the story concluded that the overall impact is minimal, so neither side can make an effective economic argument.
And here we see how facts can be twisted into lies . . .
An outstanding warrant, I assume, is one which has not yet been served, presumably because the suspect hasn’t been caught. The average warrant on a citizen probably gets served much more quickly than the average warrant on an alien.
Now this is certainly cause for concern–one problem with having lots of “undocumented” people in your midst is that it makes law enforcement more difficult. But by leaving out “outstanding”, the glurge makes it sound as if 95% of murderers in LA are illegal aliens, which is nonsense.
