(06-22-2018 11:22 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  I know that the process for becoming a legal US resident, and the process for becoming a citizen is exacting.

A very good friend of mine, when I met him, was Australian and had green-carded via the lottery here. And he applied for citizenship. He very nearly was deported during the process --- for the terrible crime of driving his sports car +30 (at 3 in the morning on an otherwise empty road).

When you have that magic green card or path to citizenship, I will grant you that they are law-abiding to the teeth --- they have something very valuable to lose if they f-up in the absolute slightest.

Being raised in El Paso, my experience is that crime is far more prevalent in the illegal groups than from those that I knew in the 'green card' program.

And the rate of bona fide asylum-seekers (essentially treated as green card residents for purposes of subject to deportation) I would hazard is no more than 5 per cent.

The question isnt necessarily 'what is the recidivism' for asylum-seekers. Having a 'crime rate of .2 per cent' across maybe 5 per cent of a population is more likely subsumed in the entirety of the crime rate probably a factor of ten or more across the other 95 per cent.

And also, the asylum issue clouds the 'real rate'. It is interesting to see influxes of populations coming from 'asylum-easy' countries as opposed to other countries. And, tbh, I am good friends with people whom I knew from the the oil exploration days who massively gamed the asylum de jour issue to gain residency here.

So, to be blunt, while I am sure that there are numbers of people who are legitimate asylum seekers, I am also more than positive that the 'favored origin de jour' is (and has been not just in the recent past but in the deep past) gamed like hell in the issue of emigrating.

Also, since it is actually relatively easy (compared to and opposed to say, Vietnam or Laos or Nigeria) to trek to the United States from Central America, that problem is probably worse than what I expect it to be.

To be clear, there’s strong evidence that illegal immigrants, as a whole (not just asylum seekers), are less likely to commit serious crimes. That’s most likely due to, you know, being here illegally and not wanting to get deported.

Wash Po summarizes a CATO study and an article from the journal Criminology that dive into this a bit. If anything, I think you can at least say that illegal immigrants, once in the country, are no less likely to commit a crime than a legal citizen.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washing...ore-crime/

It seems like we’re speaking in anecdotes a lot at the moment, even though there is a mountain of data on illegal immigration right at our finger tips.