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425

‘Migrant Crime Wave’ Not Supported by Data, Despite High-Profile Cases (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

44 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/4CKoY

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 9 months ago (3 children)

All you have to do is think about this reasonably (I know, I know). Undocumented immigrants to the US want to come here so badly that they're willing to do it outside of the law. They know full well that if they get caught just for that, they're in a fuckload of trouble. It is clearly in the immediate, direct, and personal best interest of an undocumented immigrant to stay well clear of law enforcement. This means - wait for it - not breaking any other laws.

Undocumented immigrants have a very strong incentive to be absolutely well-behaved.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 9 months ago

It's even a step further. They also don't want anyone to break the law against them. Who would they turn to? The police will arrest them.

[+] [email protected] -18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

That's not how it works in NYC. The city police don't cooperate with ICE and even make an effort to protect illegal immigrants who have committed crimes from being deported. Simply talking to the cops while being an illegal immigrant isn't going to get someone detained.

This is all beside the point because the migrants in question aren't illegal immigrants who have entered the country secretly - the authorities have permitted them to enter and already know who they are. (The authorities are in fact spending a great deal of money on them.)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

That's how it should be though. Everybody is equal under the law, so you shouldn't punish undocumented immigrants harder than civilians.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is all beside the point because the migrants in question aren't illegal immigrants who have entered the country secretly - the authorities have permitted them to enter and already know who they are. (The authorities are in fact spending a great deal of money on them.)

I don't get it. Are you saying that's bad?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm not saying anything about whether that's bad. I'm just saying that the person I'm responding to is making an argument (illegal immigrants are less likely to commit other crimes since they want to avoid police attention which would get them deported) which is doubly inapplicable to the existence or lack thereof of a "migrant crime wave" in NYC.

[+] [email protected] -20 points 9 months ago (3 children)

A few bad apples spoil the bunch.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And I fully expect there is a higher ratio of "bad apples" among other groups, including "American citizens."

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

316 people are shot in America every day. ~ 340 million people in the U.S.
Claims of 7+ million migrants have come in since 2021. Round up to their benefit and say 8/340 puts us at 2.35% of the populous. So that should mean we should be hearing about more than 7 people shot by migrants daily.

That doesn't address other forms of crime... But I surely am not hearing of 7 a day

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Yep, republicans sure have destroyed quite a lot in their bad apple behavior.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

No, because unlike cops there's no requirement to associate or work with a bad apple. You don't have to defend them or even tolerate them. You can just walk away. So while they're in the same category, they are not in the same barrel.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago

I'm more afraid of getting shot by a white caucasian male nazi than any of any migrant having no legal papers.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've had this conversation with a relative. Just look at how high crime is! Well, actually it's rather low lately... well, it's the migrants they are causing the problem! Sure, sure... and this is your number one concern for the future of the country over healthcare, education, and protecting our democratic process?

The rage bait content has a strong distorting effect on perception.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Hyperreality.

In the 1960s postmodernists theorised that in a sufficiently technologically advanced society, it becomes impossible to tell reality from the simulation of reality - the hyperreal you see on tv, social media, etc.

The sad fact is that for politicians reality is less real than the hyperreal. If crimes goes down in the real world it's not necessarily that relevant, because voters will only vote accordingly if the simulated/mediatised version of reality shows crime as having gone down. The hyperreal has more real consequences and becomes part of public perception and even history. Reality often doesn't. Real life events often only have real life consequences, if the simulation of reality presents them as having happened in the way they actually happened.

Further watching: Videodrome (1983), eXistenZ(1999), the Matrix (1999), Paprika (2006), Inception (2010), etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Videodrome

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. I remember watching it as a teenager in the 90s and having no freaking clue what was going on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Hypoxicreality

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Same as it ever was, Republicans peddle this xenophobic lie every election.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Democrats just as much. They just proposed the toughest border control bill...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (3 children)

It was literal bait.

They knew they would move the goalposts and not vote on it. The border is the only thing they had to run on, and they shot that all to hell. The economy is slowly getting better, wages are rising and the stupid Republicans not only shot themselves in the foot over the impeachment based on Russian criminal hearsay, they reloaded and shot the other one over the border deal they got.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't know that I agree that it was bait. They were working on that bill long before it became apparent that it wouldn't pass.

Even if it was bait, it was a tacit agreement that the racist fearmongering from the right was true.

I do think it was good political strategy in the end, but it still advanced and legitimized the alarming eliminationist rhetoric coming from the maga camp

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

advanced and legitimized

Do you know how much "legitimizing" something is worth in politics? Nothing. All politicians are masters at "legitimizing" whatever their voters want through cheap words. Actually doing something costs money and may piss off the wrong person, so they try to avoid that.

You can literally tell everyone placating things, "legitimizing" everyone's opinion, and do nothing at the end of the day.

It doesn't matter.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm sorry, but I can't be optimistic about this.

Even if we accept it was bait, and not just the DNC pivoting to the right, I think it was a losing move. Who is this going to sway? Republicans aren't the kind to be well-informed and swayed by the changing circumstance of current events, so it won't peel any of them away. As for the rest, it just shrank the differences between the two parties, whether practically or purely optically. It's not like this just finally demonstrated that the Republicans were a fucking joke of a party when it comes to actual governance.

So we showed that the Republicans are incompetent hypocrites, as though that's new information, and as if that realization would change any hearts or minds. And in exchange for this completely worthless prize, all it cost us was a now bipartisan consensus to push The Big Lie about immigrants. I don't consider that a victory.

The DNC is still the lesser evil, and there's still a significant margin. I just wish that margin was growing because the Democrats were moving left, not because they're both moving right but at different speeds.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I haven't seen any Democrats say they did it on purpose, but I could've missed that memo.

But even if it is bait, it's using immigrant lives as bait, and I'm not cool with that. What if the Republicans voted for the bill? Risking all those lives, for what?

And furthermore: now that the Republicans are proven to be hypocrites, do you think that this will cost them any votes?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Not among the base

But

Independent voters are watching, and the Republican party is tanking with the 18-40s Independents.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Thank you, I've been so pissed off about this, but every chucklefuck acts like this was such an important bill and wasn't just the Democrats trying to capture the mythical (read: doesn't exist) "moderate voter" who is basically a racist but wants medicare for all.

Why else do they push these bills that address all the conservative talking points as though they were true?

Also, before I get some "Blah blah blah Ukraine Funding" this is par for the course for Democrats, writing legislation that is the right-wings wet-dream is half of what they fucking do, just look at the ACA, oops, I mean RomneyCare.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's not how I interpreted what happened, Democrats reject the lie but don't mind secure borders and if that's what it takes to make government function they are willing to pass bills to that effect.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah FUCK them DREAMers, amirite?

The US would cease to function without all the cheap, illegal immigrant labor it uses for everything from harvesting food to janitorial services.

If it's a job you wouldn't want to do, you can bet your ass someone without a social security number has been hired to do it for less than minimum wage.

That's why the border bill didn't pass, because the Republicans already had a taste of what happens in Florida with that.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The same people dependent on cheap migrant labor seek to criminalize it. I suppose this gives them more leverage with which to exploit. If the right were serious about ending illegal immigration it would mean going after employers, not the migrants, and if successful it would mean paying people enough that they are willing to do unpleasant jobs. They don't want that, they want a convenient scapegoat with which to fearmonger and labor they can exploit. As noncitizens, this group doesn't have political power to push back, and they can be made to seem scary and foreign to their xenophobic base.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Gee maybe because the media eats this shit up, just like they eat up any kind of copaganda. The media is overly trusting and sympathetic to cops, and conservatives in general.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago

What? conservatives lying about crime!?! But they assured me they weren't! They winked at me and everything!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

"It's not what I expected but then again I wasn't sure what to expect when I came here" - some idiot who really thought the boarder was being invaded by "illegals".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

I wonder if there is some kind of bias that keeps making some cases high profile and not other.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Relevant: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2014704117

Texas is SAFER every time an illegal immigrant enters the state.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Stories are more powerful than statistics, so sadly this won't convince anyone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

It makes the story of Brexit so great. They actually kicked all immigrants out with great fanfare. Then they discovered a big part of their workers were suddenly gone, so some businesses closed down, production decreased, healthcare couldn't find nurses and that kind of stuff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Imagine validating obvious bullshit claims enough to do statistical analysis to prove they are, in fact, bullshit claims.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Conservative-friendly headline: Crime Wave of Illegal Immigrants

"Liberal Media" headline: Um actually, as it happens, sir, the thing is you see that numbers - we did numbers of it, that is a thorough review of words and numbers related to the reality of the situation shows that in fact there does not appear to be a factual or clearly identifiable basis for that being a thing that is which we could maybe be wrong about but we feel pretty good about the numbers even.

Advantage: fascists.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"A few rotten apples spoiled the bunch" is the excuse that many many groups of people including police use to describe the inherent crime that comes with any population.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

"A few bad apples" is also what the police use to handwave away whenever one of their own goes bonkers and kills unarmed civilians

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Looking at they NYC Crime Statistics the headline is...subjective.

Here's the "7 Major Felony Offenses" data from 2001 through 2022.

Here's the most current CompStat data for 2024 and it includes 2023 for reference.

Flipping between those sources shows some different things.

The sum of crimes from all 7 categories does show a negligible increase from 2022 (126,589) to 2023 (126,786) but it doesn't tell the whole story, for that you have to look at the individual categories where Murder, Rape, and Robbery were down small amounts but Felony Assault, Grand Larceny, and Grand Larceny Auto were all up and in some cases the increase was significant.

Comparing 2023 to 2024 we see that Robbery and Felony Assault are up and that's a problem because those two categories represent literally thousands of crimes of the type that your average NYC dweller is likely to experience.

So is the statement "But police data indicate that there has been no surge in crime since April 2022,..." accurate? That depends entirely on what part of the data you're looking at. Bottom line number? No. Individual categories that impact tens of thousands of people? Yes.

As an aside where you REALLY start to see the problem is if you compare the 2023 data to the 2019 data because holy shit! Aggregate Felony Crime is up 30% since 2019; 95,606 in 2019 vs 126,786 in 2023!

There's no way around it, NYC has absolutely gotten more dangerous when compared to its pre-pandemic self. That doesn't mean its the result of Migrants but since the migrant wave and the crime surge happened at basically the same time as the end of pandemic it's really easy to say that they're related and its really difficult to refute since NYC doesn't gather Citizenship status.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Important footnote on that 2023-24 data

Figures are preliminary and subject to further analysis and revision

Also, from the article,

More than 170,000 migrants have arrived in the city since [April 2022, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas started sending buses of migrants to New York], and it is difficult to know what crime statistics would show had they not come. But as the migrant numbers have increased, the overall crime rate has stayed flat. And, in fact, many major categories of crime — including rape, murder and shootings — have decreased, according to an analysis of the New York Police Department’s month-by-month statistics since April 2022.

The monthly number of robberies since migrants began arriving in large numbers has fluctuated. It peaked at 1,730 in July 2022, hit a low of 1,155 in February 2023 and climbed to 1,417 last month.

Grand larcenies have also gone up and down, but the monthly total stood at 4,056 in January, compared with a high of 4,687 in August 2022.

Crime might be up since 2019, but it doesn't look like it is since spring of 2022 when bussing started. Everything appears to have either gone steadily down or just gone up and down a little bit month to month, but there's no sustained increases that correlate with migrants arriving.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

Important footnote on that 2023-24 data

It's the only data publicly available so any defects would effect the NYT article as well as my comment. I'm making a good faith effort to explore their conclusion, this isn't meant to be a "Migrants Bad" comment.

Crime might be up since 2019

There is no "might". A straight comparison of all 7 categories from 2019 through 2022 shows a MARKED increase. This isn't even debatable.

...but it doesn’t look like it is since spring of 2022 when bussing started.

You can clearly see by comparing the 2021 and 2022 columns in my first link that crime took a BIG jump in 2022. Then in 2023 we have two big changes in a span of just 45 days; in February NYC removed many of its COVID restrictions and then barely 6 weeks later in April the Migrants started show up by the literal bus load..

The question I have ATM is where can I find a month by month breakdown for 2022, because that will show us when the crime increase actually started and allow us to judge that timing against migrant arrival, and then the same thing for all of 2023 so we can do a direct MtM comparison between the two.

Right now if I had to guess I'd say that much of the 2022 and 2023 crime increase was actually driven by post-pandemic socioeconomic conditions, it just so happens that the the migrant wave happened at the same time making it easy to conflate the two. However the data that's easily available from CompStat doesn't have sufficient resolution to tell for sure.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You also have to take in account police fudging the numbers. I know low crime reporting makes the police look successful, but if crime numbers are higher, they can be used to justify a higher budget. Everyone is aware of how often police lie about encounters.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Good points but I since I'm trying to align with the same data that the NYT used in their article I have to use the sources and statistics that they did.