Comment: David Brooks is misusing statistics to attack Trump and downplay the fact that hispanic crime rates are higher than non-hispanic whites, whether you are talking about hispanics as a whole, or just the three big groups, Mexican-Americans, Central Americans, and Caribbean Hispanics.
He makes some of the same errors of Unz in this regard. Specifically, Unz argues that incarceration rates, with his own adjustments to the rates, are a good method to compare crime rates. The flaw of this is that (1) hispanic career criminals are often deported so do not stay in US prisons long compared to career white and black criminals (2) hispanics have shorter tenure in the USA even within each age group.
Unz next looks at the overall crime rate in cities compared to their hispanic population. He finds that quite often heavy hispanic cities have very low crime rates, such as majority hispanic Santa Ana and El Paso, and large minority hispanic San Diego.
This is an important finding since some on the alt right do overstate the hispanic/white crime gap, which is just a fraction of the black white crime gap.
However, the problem is that this method cannot, by definition, work if hispanics are more likely to move to areas with low-crime white populations versus high-crime white populations. And indeed, hispanics are much more likely to move to areas with highly educated and low-crime white populations, like California and Colorado’s, than to areas with poorer and more criminal white populations, like West Virginia.
The other problem is that, while certain hispanic cities have very low crime rates, other have very high rates, higher than any extremely white cities. And likewise, even these low crime hispanic cities have high crime rates compared to the most exceptional white and white/asian cities. Yes, El Paso and Santa Ana are pretty low crime, but they are much more criminal than Simi Valley, Laguna Beach, Del Mar, Marin County, or the many upper middle class exurban areas around most large American cities.
City-Data Crime Index / Hispanic%/White%/Asian%
Santa Ana 200.6 77.6/10.7/10.1
El Paso 211.1 80.0/14.4/1.1
Bell Gardens 194.5 95.7/2.7/0.5
And other majority hispanic cities do not look so hot.
Merced 362.9 53.2/27.8/13.5
South Gate 322.7 94.8/3.4/0.7
Some California cities with low hispanic populations:
Irvine 89.6 11.8/44.3/38.6
Simi Valley 104.9 25.8/63.0/8.6
Palo Alto 117.5 27.8/57.7/27.8
Sunnyvale 125 13.7/36.7/42.1
Going outside of CA, here are the cities with populations between 60K and 100K with the lowest violent crime rates, the their hispanic share:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate_%2860,000%E2%80%93100,000%29
Carmel, IN 2.5%
Fishers, IN 3.4%
Flower Mound, TX 8.4%
Greenwich, CT 13.8%
Palatine, IL 18%
Orem, UT 14.8%
Johns Creek, GA 5.2%
Arlington Heights, IL 4.5%
Now the lowest violent crime rates in the 100 to 250K city range:
Irvine, CA 11.8%
Murrieta, CA 25.9%
Amherst, NY 2.3%
Frisco, TX 12.4%
Colonie, NY 1.9%
Cary, NC 7.7%
Naperville, IL 4.2%
Temecula, CA 24.7%
On average, the safest cities are far less hispanic than the state or region they are in is.
Here’s Brooks in his latest column:
Trump plays up the alleged threat of crime committed by immigrants. But the overall evidence is clear. Immigrants make American streets safer.
This is not true, but even the fake open boarders statistics has to lump our chaotic, unregulated illegal illegal immigrant population and Third World chain migration immigrants in with our imperfect but functioning skill based and First World immigration to come up with “immigrants make America safer.” But restrictions like Trump don’t think we need to keep out highly skilled scientists and the like, and we know Trump personally favors immigration from Europe.
Among native-born men without a high school diploma, about 11 percent are incarcerated. Among similarly educated Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran men here, only 2 or 3 percent get incarcerated.
The problem here is that not too many Mexican, Guatemalan, and Salvadorian immigrants have 12 years of primary education. Comparing the incarceration of the dumbest/most impulsive 10% of native born Americans (who themselves are heavily black) with roughly the average Salvadorian is not really Apples to Apples, is it?
Numerous studies have shown that a big share of the drop in crime rates in the 1990s is a result of the surge in immigration.
This is not true, and unlike a lot of the claims, no citation to support it.
Trump plays up the threat of terrorism. But the real threat is that our border agencies spend so much time tracking down people who want to be gardeners that they don’t have the resources to track down the people who want to be suicide bombers.
Trump’s “shut down Muslim immigration” would have stopped 100% of the mass terrorist attacks committed by immigrants in the USA. I agree it would be nice if we did not have to support a massive, liberty-destorying, very expensive and wasteful internal security state to protect us from ISIS. But that is the unavoidable price of having a Muslim immigrant population. I agree we should not have to pay that price.
The bulk of the evidence shows that immigrants have a hugely positive effect on total American G.D.P
Annexing Yemen, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Somalia would also increase “total GDP.” Hmm, maybe that is not such a good statistic to evaluate policy.
Second, by 2044, America will be a majority-minority country. This is a very different America than the one people who grew up in the 1960s were used to. It’s a historical transformation that is bound to raise very legitimate concerns.
Stopping what Brooks calls the “browning of America” is not one of the legitimate concerns. We are only allowed to make sure that the browning-bringers are “properly vetted.”
Donald Trump’s G.O.P. is a rear-window party pining for a white America that is never coming back.
So let’s enact policies that speed its demise!
The increase in low level and unreported crime with hispanic immigration is absolutely real.
1. Is Unz/Brooks going to say with a straight face that hispanic immigrant areas don’t have higher rates of graffiti and littering? How about DUI and driving without a license and insurance?
2. The people to justify sanctuary cities and amnesty always tell us that illegals are afraid to report crimes to the police. This is no doubt true to some extent.
So, isn’t it the case that the more illegals there are, the more crime will be under-reported? Even legal hispanic immigrants may have illegals in the household, or not speak enough English to want to call the police. So the underreporting goes beyond just illegals.
Your point about the MSM having to tell us our own eyes are lying is absolutely right, Here is just another boring, typical article from San Diego that did not get an ounce of national coverage: a 69 year old white woman cleaning graffiti off a wall was killed by a 23 year old hispanic with “road rage” doing some sort of drunk street racing in a residential neighborhood.
A community activist was painting over graffiti in a San Diego neighborhood when she was struck by a suspected drunk driver who police say was involved in a road rage altercation.
Police said 69-year-old Maruta Gardner died after being hit in the Mission Beach area Friday when the driver of a Toyota Corolla passed a Ford Mustang and went onto the shoulder. After striking Gardner, the driver sped away but was arrested a short distance away.
Police said the hit-and-run was the result of a road-rage altercation. The Toyota driver – 23-year-old Jonathan Domingo Garcia – was booked for investigation of vehicular manslaughter, DUI and hit and run.
More about one of Marco’s New and Improved Americans
Jonathan Domingo Garcia, 23, accused of killing a 68-year-old community activist removing graffiti in Mission Beach pleaded not guilty Thursday to eight charges, including gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and felony hit-and-run.
Deputy District Attorney Steve Schott told Judge Jay Bloom that at about 3 p.m. Friday — three hours before the crash — Garcia and a friend were seen slashing tires on cars.
About three hours later, the car Garcia was driving rear-ended a Ford Mustang, and he failed to stop, the prosecutor said.
The driver of the Mustang pulled in front of Garcia’s Toyota Corolla, authorities said. Garcia then made an illegal right turn in a 15-mph zone, and struck the victim, who was on the road’s shoulder, Schott said. Gardner died the next day.
“The defendant didn’t stop. He actually drove down and parked, exited his vehicle and checked for damage on his car. He spent 5 minutes doing that,” said Schott. “He then returned to the area and an officer tried to flag him down. Once again he did not stop. And instead continued to drive, actually struck another vehicle. Did not stop. Before the officer finally made contact with him.”
“Instead of asking about the person he just struck on the roadway, he asked when he could get his car back,” said Schott.
Three hours after the accident, Garcia’s blood-alcohol level was measured at .06 percent, Schott said. Alcohol, marijuana and depressants were found in the defendant’s system
“I think the defendant is an extreme danger to the community by his callousness by the act itself plus he’s a flight risk,” the judge said. “If he’s going to do hit and runs there’s no guarantees he’ll come back. So bail is set at $550,000 and waiving bail review.”
Garcia faces 15 years in prison if he’s convicted. His next court appearance will be March 10.
Gardner, a former principal at Mission Bay High School, was honored by the San Diego City Council last year, which declared Nov 3 “Maruta Gardner Day.” Gardner would have celebrated her birthday this Saturday.
Does David Brooks’s “immigrants are good for the economy” account for the violent death of Mrs. Gardner and others like her? For the $400,000 in taxes we will pay to house the man who killed her in prison? For the tires he slashed and the two vehicles he hit and ran that same day?
Economics can be complicated, but you don’t need to engage in complicated research to know that importing random poorly educated people from poor, violent countries will make America dumber, poorer, and a worse place to live for the natives.
* And the drugs. The drugs. Open borders; the industrial production of illicit drugs; and a large segment of the population susceptible to addiction. Good grief.
