A Bad Anti-Wall Argument

Over at Dan's blog, he posted a response to Stan which, as is common on the blogs, was followed by comments which, as is common on the blogs, went off in tangents here and there.  One of those tangents contained claims by the troll known as "feodor" and is the topic of this post.  It is one of several points he claims as facts and I may or may not go on to address them all, but we'll just have to see how time allows for doing so, and whether or not my interest in doing so remains or wanes. 

feo's comment is below, and it ends with the link from which it comes.  He believes the studies to which the article refers ends all debate on the issue of illegal immigrant crime...because he just needs to have us fall into line with other Trump-hating, America-hating leftist fakes like himself.   My response follows:
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“Now, four academic studies show that illegal immigration does not increase the prevalence of violent crime or drug and alcohol problems. In the slew of research, motivated by Trump's rhetoric, social scientists set out to answer this question: Are undocumented immigrants more likely to break the law?

All of this comes as no surprise to Art Acevedo, the police chief in Houston, which has one of largest undocumented populations in the nation. The chief has been publicly critical of the immigration crackdown.

Cato found that in 2015, criminal conviction and arrest rates in Texas for undocumented immigrants were lower than those of native-born Americans for murder, sexual assault and larceny.

"There's no wave of crime being committed by the immigrant community," Acevedo said. "As a matter of fact, a lot of the violent crime that we're dealing with is being committed by people that are born and raised right here in the United States."

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/02/607652253/studies-say-illegal-immigration-does-not-increase-violent-crime
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There are a number of problems with this article and the info it contains:

1.  Only abstracts are available for a couple of the studies so far, with a cost attached to viewing the study itself.  I'm not up for shelling out a red cent for any studies put up for review by feo, who likely didn't pay to read them either.  Rather, he could have and should have paid for it, and then found a way to copy/paste, provide a link or in some way provided the info for the perusal of those he hopes to "show up" with their allegedly unassailable conclusions.   I did find another way to get at one of them.  

2.  For those studies I was able to actually read, I would say that I am not prepared as yet to pretend I am confident that I could expound on every aspect of them, as some of them are rather detailed and require more study than I've been able to give them at any single sitting in the time I had available to me to try.  It's an important caveat I feel necessary to concede so as to avoid any attempt to presume by trolls who wish only to demonize rather than engage in civil discourse.  'Cuz that's how feo rolls.

3.  What I've read thus far seems heavily dependent upon computer models, which as we all know from the climate debate, are suspect if not used properly.  The results spit out by these models are the result of the info inputted into the program and just as important as what is fed into them is that which is not. 

4.  One consistent caveat of the studies themselves, which is also present in those I favor, is how difficult it is to gather all that is needed to come up with accurate numbers when all is said and done.  This is due to a number of factors that loom large in such endeavors, such as

a)  the fact that there is no standard across all law enforcement agencies with regard to reporting.  Some local departments do not make the effort to determine the citizenship status of those arrested.  Some are prevented by their municipal overlords from even asking a suspect such a thing as whether or not the suspect is a citizen.

b)  many crimes by illegals are not reported in the first place, particularly those perpetrated against other illegals who fear their own deportation should they be found out upon reporting their victimization.

c)  some illegal alien criminals simply do not have any plan to remain in the country, but enter simply to perpetrate their crime (or to check up on those here but who are under their control) and then return over the border after.

These are just the few of the problems that make the calculations of the studies from the above link less than accurate.

5.  The manner in which "crime rate" is calculated seems flawed with regard to how it is viewed by the researchers, and thus by trolls like feo.  For example:

Imagine the nation of Bob populated by 100 people, ten of which engage in criminal activity.  We can say that the crime rate is 10%.  Add to that the immigration of 100 more people from the nation of Frank, ten of which engage in criminal activity.  Now there are 200 people in the nation of Bob, with twenty who engage in criminal activity.  The crime rate is still 10%.  The immigration of the Franks did not raise the crime rate when viewed as a percentage.

But what if there were only nine Franks who engaged in criminal activity?  Adding that 100 people  would have lowered the crime rate to 9.5%!  The problem with this is that there are nine more people engaged in criminal activity than there was before the immigration of the Franks!!  For the citizens of Bob who must deal with the effects of criminal activity, there is clearly more crime than there was before.  Why should Bob ignore that increase just to appease those who believe those who seek to enter must be allowed?

6.  I also have yet to figure out exactly how they deal with the numbers of crimes committed by each individual, legal or otherwise, as well as the severity of the crimes committed.  As to the former, if an illegal is convicted of a crime, he is either imprisoned or deported depending upon how the trial proceeded.  If an active criminal leaves the country as part of a deal or because he was forced, he no longer has his criminal activity counted from that point on.  Citizens of the U.S. who are criminals are not deported, and depending upon the crime, they are eventually released to the public where they will commit more crimes that are indeed added to the calculations. 

This article from what appears to be a blog gathers some relevant info, much of it referring to a federal government reimbursement program called the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.  It is referenced in the troll's linked piece, I believe.  But more important than that is how the numbers it references are calculated.  Using both SCAAP numbers as well as a US Sentencing Commission Report from 2015, the numbers are measured according to imprisoned illegals versus their total population in America.  The bottom line here is that the numbers indicate that illegal aliens, and just those imprisoned only for non-immigration related crimes, are greatly over represented in the prison system.  John Lott's research involving Arizona showed the same.  Pew Research puts the illegal population in this country as around 3% of the total population, yet these three studies show illegals make up much more than three percent of the prison population. 

7.  This final point is the crux of it all with regard to illegal alien crime rates.  If we assume that what feo's studies attempt to show are absolutely true, it does not stand as a legitimate argument against erecting a border wall/fence/barrier.  As has been said often by many, each crime committed in this country by an illegal alien, every death by a drunk illegal alien...each of these are crimes and incidents that would never have happened had these illegals been prevented from entering.  Thus, whether or not they actually do commit crimes at a lower rate than American citizens is not the issue at all.  They can't commit ANY crimes if they aren't able to enter.  THAT is the point.  And there is no legitimate reason why we should accept the lame argument that it should affect our decision one way or the other to erect a wall.