Yet another reader sent me a great bad math link. (Keep ’em coming guys!) This one is an astonishingly nasty slight of hand, and a great example of how people misuse statistics to support a political agenda. It’s by someone
named “Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin”, and it’s an attempt to paint illegal
immigrants as a bunch of filthy criminal lowlifes. It’s titled “The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants in the United States.”
With a title like that, you’d think that she has actual data showing that nearly one million sex crimes were committed by illegal immigrants, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong.
After conducting a 12 month in-depth study of illegal immigrants who committed sex crimes and murders for the time period of January 1999 through April 2006 , it is clear that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally.
There were 1500 cases analyzed in depth. They included: serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. Police reports, public records, interviews with police, and media accounts were all included. Offenders were located in 36 states, but it is clear, that the most of the offenders were located in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. California was number one, followed by Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
Based on population numbers of 12,000,000 illegal immigrants and the fact that young males make up more of this population than the general U.S. population, sex offenders in the illegal immigrant group make up a higher percentage. When examining ICE reports and public records, it is consistent to find sex offenders comprising 2% of illegals apprehended. Based on this 2% figure, which is conservative, there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States.
This translates to 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sexual offenders coming across U.S. borders illegally per day. The 1500 offenders in this study had a total of 5,999 victims. Each sex offender averaged 4 victims. This places the estimate for victimization numbers around 960,000 for the 88 months examined in this study.
That’s the meat of the paper – the rest is essentially a list of statistics about the 1500 crimes she actually studied.
So her argument is:
- Of the illegal immigrants arrested for a crime, 2% were
sex offenders. - The total numbers of illegal immigrants is approximately 12 million.
- Therefore, you can determine the number of sex offenders in the
entire population of illegal immigrants by multiplying the size of the population (12 million) by 2%, giving you 960,000.
If you actually pay attention to the numbers and how she’s trying to slip
them past you, it’s pretty obvious what kind of scam she’s pulling, but she tries to mask it behind a lot of talk about kinds of sex crimes, and why we should expect the number to be high among illegal immigrants.
Here’s the trick. 2% of the convicted criminals who happen to be illegal immigrants are guilty of some kind of sex crime. Not 2%
of the population of illegal immigrants. The population of convicted criminals
is quite different from the population of people as a whole.
To give you an idea: according to this article by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, in 2001, approximately 5% of the population of people in state prisons were guilty of sex offenses. The estimate of the number of people in the general population guilty of sex crimes varies – but it’s generally cited as somewhere between 1/3 of 1%, and 1%.
Now – the number of people in prison is different from the
number of people arrested – so those two numbers are not directly
comparable. But it should give you an idea of how different statistics about
people convicted of crimes can be different from the statistics about the public in general.
So, looking at real statistics, the percentage of illegals guilty of sexual crimes is probably not particularly different from the percentage
of non-illegals guilty of sexual crimes. And neither percentage says much of anything about the number of guilty individuals in the population as a whole.
In summary, Dr. Schurman-Kauflin is nothing but another two-bit racist who’s trying to trick people using bad math.
There is a kind of twisted logic to it. Ie:
a) 2% of criminals are sex offenders
b) illegal immigrants are criminals (otherwise they would be legal immigrants, right?)
=> 2% of illegal immigrants are sex offenders.
The mistake is merely to conflate the “crime” of crossing a border for the purpose of working to support your family back home with the truly serious crimes of rape, theft, murder and jaywalking.
you had until the last sentence. I have never directly
heard anyone talk about illegal immigrants as a race,
rather they are a way for the wealthy to further supress
middle class wages, and run a end run around taxes and
safety requirments, 2 heads of the same dragon, wealthy
people don’t want ammnisty because then they have to pay
high wages, and they don’t want the border close so they can
reap the rewords of forcing 6-10 men to live in a one bedroom apartment and work 6 day weaks to send money back
home. when propper wages would allow them to bring there family here. most blue coller people are frustrated be there is no place as cheap and mexico in the US so how do they compete?????? I say make a law forcing employers to pay
taxes on everyone and wages accordingly. no gane no system abuse-no people abused by working under sub-legal wage conditions
Sleight of hand, Mark, not slight, OK?
It could be she’s not a racist. It isn’t fair to describe her as racist, based on that article (although, her views wouldn’t be inconsistant with those of a racist …). It is possible to be anti-illegal immigrant without being racist, I think. Too often, the two bleed into one another of course. If she cared much about not being labelled racist, she might be more careful to point out that she isn’t one, but perhaps she doesn’t care about what other (say, non-biased, or of her non-core audience) people think (which is fine).
What could be speculated is that maybe she is just a bit psychopathic. It’s hard to inadvertantly make an error like that. Or perhaps it is easy to make an error like that if you are biased. So perhaps she is biased. She could be psychologically conditioned to not recognize her own fallacious arguments so long as they appear to support her conclusions. (I’m thinking about an article in skeptic magazine (2003) about why otherwise smart people believe weird things.) At the same time though, judging by the content on her site, which reads like canonical right-wing propaganda, I find it unlikely, if she were a serious scientist, that she wouldn’t realize that her writings would likely to be affected by her political beliefs, and would scrutinized by other readers knowing her political bias, and so would she recognize the need to be more careful in herself scrutinizing her own writing prior to publishing it. If that is the case, then I think that discounts the possibility that the error was an honest mistake. Instead, I think it supports the conclusion that she’s a loony with a phd, content to be feted only by the like-minded at worldnetdaily.
But I think this paper does qualify as “slight of math”.
The point I would make is that the less math inclined have to trust that both sides are not using math to advance political agendas. I think calling this person a “two-bit racist” is a bit much. It detracts from your argument. Statisticians are two-bit.
A few comments here are taking issue with Marc’s “she’s a two bit racist” comment.
While “two bit racist” is obviously not an objective measurement, I agree with Marc. She deliberately misled her audience for the purposes of broadly painting illegal immigrants as sex offenders.
And I think it is naive to say that one can so anti-illegal immigrant that you will lie to paint them as sex criminals, but that this isn’t necessarily racist.
Being against illegal immigrants to the States does not necessarily imply racism…
…because we are all aware of the great masses of Caucasians infiltrating across the long, undefended border with Canada, right?
Actually, out of the estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally, it is estimated that 600000 of them are from Europe. You tend not to hear about them as much for some reason……..
Correction:
4. Finally, you can determine the total number of victims by multiplying the number of sex offendeers (240,000) by their average offense rate (4), giving you 960,000.
Otherwise, great post
“Being against illegal immigrants to the States does not necessarily imply racism…
…because we are all aware of the great masses of Caucasians infiltrating across the long, undefended border with Canada, right?”
This is irrelevant. If someone is, for right or wrong reasons, against an activity which is performed mostly by non-white people, it does not make that person a racist. He’d be a racist if he was against that activity for the reason that it is performed by non-white people.
After reading B. Worker’s comments, I decided it’s time to crack down. We must deport everybody who can’t spell.
“…because we are all aware of the great masses of Caucasians infiltrating across the long, undefended border with Canada, right?
Posted by: Aureola Nominee, FCD | January 19, 2007”
Calling someone a racist should only be done after careful thought. It is too easy to do and can prevent bad practices being stopped.
For example; I believe that clitorectomies (sometimes called full female circumcisions) are evil and are rightly illegal in the UK and other European countries. The people who still perform this barbaric act are, mainly, Somalies and claim that it is part of their religious (islamic) practice; am I racist? am I anti-Islamic? because I oppose it.
I guess that the bad statistician has a political agenda (may be racist as well though more evidence is required). Inflame the electorate and bring in the vote, the hatred that could be engendered against illegal immigrants may be a secondary consideration, if considered at all.
“After reading B. Worker’s comments, I decided it’s time to crack down. We must deport everybody who can’t spell.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger | January 21, 2007”
Did you mean “..who can’t spell correctly.”?
As a Briton, I’ld say that’s pretty much everyone in the USA :o)
Roman et al:
Language isn’t always as precise as mathematics. The people who freak out about illegal immigrants from Mexico might not hate them because they’re not white; but Racism is the closest term that I know to describe them.
We don’t see the same kind of freaking out in today’s America over illegals from Canada, Poland, or Ireland. It’s very specifically the spanish speaking illegals coming from Mexico that are the target of their hatred and abuse – and whether or not we know the cause of their behavior is skin color or something else, I think racism is the best term to describe it.
To give a point of supporting evidence to the “racism” label, just take a look at what’s happened in some of the recent crackdowns on illegals. Immigration agents have “inspected” several workplaces known to hire illegals – and the way that they decided who to check was by separating out anyone who looked mexican. Whites and blacks were both separated out and allowed to leave without question; hispanic or mexican-looking people were all put into the inspection line – no questions asked. Agents spoke in Spanish to the suspected illegals group – even though some of them were American citizens who didn’t speak spanish.
To me, that pretty much qualifies as racism.
The article that I was mocking in this post is playing very much the same game. She doesn’t accuse all illegal immigrants of being criminals. She’s quite specifically focusing on Mexicans. And she’s using what she must know is deceptive math to label all Mexican illegals as a crime risk.
Hmmm, no, I think Joseph was correct with ‘who can’t spell’. Don’t know how you Britons use the word ‘spell’, but there’s certainly a case to be made here in the US that implicit in some usages of the word ‘spell’ is that you ‘spelled it correctly’; otherwise you ‘misspelled’ it. The ‘correctly’ is redundant, like saying ‘…who can’t win victoriously’.
Perhaps if Britons could have straightened out the use of the English alphabet in assembling their words and had some consistent rules, you’d see less spelling errors. It’s essentially just memorization of every word you plan to use; you surely can’t go by how it’s pronounced. What’s the rule for when to use a silent ‘k’ or ‘g’ or ‘p’ before an ‘n’ (‘knock’, ‘gnat’, ‘pneumatic’). I personally like the myriad letter combinations that give you the exact same sound ‘Who are you to rue your stew when walking through the loo?’. Don’t even want to go into ‘i’ before ‘e’ except…
Just kidding ya, and in fairness, it’s probably safe to say that in general, Americans don’t hold a candle to Britons in the usage of correct grammar and spelling.
It isn’t illegal immigrants who’s criminality should especially concern anyone. Rather, it is the children of illegal immigrants who are the real problem. Hispanics have nearly three times the per capita incarceration rates for most classes of violent crimes than do whites.
I suspect the reason why illegal immigrants don’t show up in the stats as much as their children is probably mostly a function of age. Males, 18-24 years old, commit a huge segment of violent crimes in our country. It seems likely the age of the average illegal immigrant is greater than the Hispanic norm.
Most of our illegals are Hispanics and Hispanics have high illegitimacy rates, high rates of government dependency, high rates of criminality, high rates of gang involvement,low rates of educational attainment, and a study from Pew found that Hispanic citizens are not even particularly patriotic. Whatever the short-term economic benefits might be from illegal immigrants, the costs incurred by their children and grandchildren make them a bad bargain. Sorry if you think I’m a racist for pointing that out but that is the truth.
One problem that this piece brings up is the fact that our government doesn’t bother collecting statistics on the immigration status of those arrested for serious crimes. It should.
I think rather than racist, the correct term would be xenophobic. Skin color is just the easiest way to identify the people that are from a different group.
>
I agree in large part, obviously I knew what was meant. Though if I was to write ‘who can’t repair’ you would be justified in asking ‘repair what?’ and it coud have been missing a word or three “who can’t spell deoxyribonucleic and thymidylic” :o)
Not a serious comment, attempt at humour.
I suspect I thought that something was missing because I work with a large number of non-native English speakers (Arabs, Japanese, Indians, Filipinos, Italians etc) as well as native english speakers who have developed their own variants (Australians, South Africans etc) and it is safest to assume that the recipient of my words/writing speaks/reads Globish so I have to specify rather carefully to avoid confusion.
My favourites in English are words that are spelt the same but pronounced differently and mean different things such as “wind” and autoantonyms such as “cleave”. The variant meanings ascribed to the same word by the various families of english speakers (i.e. fag, fanny and rubber have various meanings depending on where the speaker was raised) just makes it more fun.
I’m not too sure that Britons are better trained in grammar or spelling than citizens of the USA.
Based on some of the CVs I have had the misfortune to review some adult Britons need to return to primary school.
There are some similarities in mathematics, the same symbol can mean different things depending on the part of mathematics that you’re working in and the meaning of subscripts and superscripts can change. (see “The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” for examples).
The U.S. Federal Bureau of prisons reports 18% of federal prisoners are illegal Mexicans. That’s about 1 in five. Logically, if the U.S. Border were secured, these criminals would never have gotten into the country. Instead, we now pay about $25,000 per year to keep them in prison.
FUCK MEXICAN LETS KILL THEM ALL!!
We pay so much money for these illegal immagrants when there not even suppose to be in OUR country. There trying to better there life? Thats such bullshit because there not bettering there life there hurting ours. Look at all the rape cases and killings. These people don’t know any better. They think raping, killing, starting gangs, stealing, and selling drugs is ok. They grew up seeing this in mexico so they think it’s ok here. Look at it this way.. There a bunch of untrained dogs! I’m not being racist. Mexicans that are LEGAL and got there green card and Illegal immagrants that ARE NOT LEGAL are the same color, maybe even have the same last name but there different. One is good and one isn’t and let me tell u the one that has the fucking green card is good. and that person who has there green card and took the proper steps to get it shouldn’t have be degrated of there ethnicity. They did the right thing and the chances of that person being a killer or a rapist is very slim. Those people who don’t have there green card are breaking the law anyway you look at it and if u don’t like the damn law then get the fuck out of america!!! My grandparents are LEGAL immagrants they had to wait years to get there green card to america, they had to wait so why can’t they? i no why they can’t wait because there selfish people!! they think that it’s ok.. and people that will break one law will break lots of laws. and saying “not all illegal immgrants are criminals.” Is the most bullshited responce ever!!! EVER fucking illegal immgrant is a criminal!!! A criminal that is selfish, lazy, and very dangous to our socity!
“Hispanics have nearly three times the per capita incarceration rates for most classes of violent crimes than do whites.” said by mike. You can’t say Hispanics, because mexicans are apart of our country! Legal mexicans should have just as many rights as a any other citizen. Legal mexicans are Americans! and any AMERICAN (white black mexican) shouldn’t be divided, we are ONE. so we need to stand up as an American and kill are the illegal immagrants!!!!!
Um, by that logic and policy we won’t allow US citizens to visit EU – they grow up amongst free guns and an order of magnitude more crime, so they would think it’s ok here. But it would be all right because US citizens are all “a bunch of untrained dogs” that wouldn’t try to live like the rest of us.
As a High school teacher in California, I see the children of illegals enjoying all that America has to offer, they are growing up selfish, spoiled, and lazy brats. We are going to have a major problem on our hands in a few years when these kids are suppose to join the work force and do the jobs “that Americans don’t want to do.” They believe those jobs are beneath them and will not do them. They will find ways to exploit for society for all they can get. We will need to constantly allow more third world workers into our country to do these jobs. It is a vicious cycle.
Enough talk about American children. What are the immigrant children like?
That’s because they’re Americans. Probably by law, and if not, then by culture (they’ve been raised here if you taught them). Why would they want to do jobs that they don’t want to?
As well, why is this a major problem? Because we won’t have enough people desperate for a buck that are willing to do jobs too difficult or degrading for most people to do at the prices we’re currently willing to pay? All you have to do is raise the pay and you’ll get plenty of Americans doing them.
And this bald assertion of evil intent comes from… where?
You mean, we’ll need to allow them if we don’t feel like getting off our fat, lazy asses and doing the jobs ourselves. Or paying more so that all the fat, lazy people *will* be willing to do those jobs.
I mean, our current exploitation scheme is working pretty well. I wouldn’t call the cycle vicious at all.
“The people who still perform this barbaric act are, mainly, Somalies and claim that it is part of their religious (islamic) practice; am I racist? am I anti-Islamic? because I oppose it.”
I don’t know but you are poorly informed on this particular topic.
Female circumcision is not “mainly” performed by Somalis but is common several parts of African.
Furthermore seeing as its widely practiced amongst African Christians and Animists as well as Muslims (and is NOT poracticed by the overwhelming majority of Muslims) its difficult to see how opposition to the practice could be construed as anti-Muslim.
They are NOT “Americans” technically. They are still mexican and saturated with mexican culture. Having been born in the USA is merely a anchor their illegal parents stuck in the ground in an effort to stay here. I’ve noticed, and I’m 56 years of age, how mexicans have become more smart alec over the years. Burning American flags in the very country of which they want to be a part. WHAT? Staging protests “demanding” rights. WHAT? What the hell is going on here. You people who lay back and say it’s okay just wait another 4-6 years and watch how the education system comes to a screaching halt due to not having the classroom space to put these illegals. How many times do we see a mexican killing a car load of kids/people because mexicans donot know how to drive in this country. These mexican kids who’re born here and given citizenship automatically are eligible for FREE GOV’T HANDOUTS. Who the hell do you think pays for this? Their parents don’t because since their parents donot pay taxes they don’t pay for these free handouts. How many more people can we cram inot the USA before it explodes? Watch what happens. There used to be a KKK against blacks. There will soon be another vigilante group burning down mexicans homes, etc. It’s already started. In Beaumont,Tx a white guy marries a mexican girl. The neighbors burned their trailer to the ground. It’ll happen again.
I don’t give a flying fig whether it’s only 1 illegal Mexican or 1 million. If they weren’t in the US they’d be committing those crimes someplace else. The US needs more illegal Mexican immigrants like a submarine needs a screen door.
Thorn: Please justify your insinuation that they are committing crimes more than the typical American. Control for socioeconomic status, if at all possible.
The fact that they’re here illegally is a crime..enough said.criminals defend criminals so if you are an advocate of ILLEGAL imagration you probably a crook or a thief like them.two birds of a feather.let them stay in your home please and hopefully one day one of them will cut your throat and get rid of you.that’s a good trade to me..
Please justify your assertion that illegal immigrants are crooks or thieves. It is true that they are breaking the law when they illegally immigrate, but that is clearly a far different thing than stealing from someone. Unless you are willing to say that all crimes are equal…
Yeah, read comment number 10 you stupid idiot who wrote this!
Mr. Carol is obviously one of those liberal who like to throw the “race” card every chance he gets. I’m not going to argue one way or the other as to the math used, be it bad or good, but nowhere in the part of Dr. Schurman-Kauflin’s writing that he cites is there any specific race or nationality mentioned. The only reference was to the immigration status of the arrestees or convicts. Mr. Carol is not without his own bias’, obviously.
I have to ask… does that kind of crap actually fool people like you, or are you just clinging to the slim hope that it will fool us?
By the way, his name is Chu-Carroll, you dolt.
Excuse me Skemono, “Mr. CHU-CAROL” is exactly what I stated, one of those liberals who likes to play the “race” card every chance he can. I guess it is hard to fool a fool such as yourself. Show me the error of my way, PLEASE. I challenge you to show me a specific mention of “RACE” in the cited portion of Schurman-Kauflin’s writing. Or for that matter a specific nationality. You won’t be able to but that won’t stop a moron such as yourself from seeing the invisible.
Interesting. Given that criminals are coming into our country, committing horrendous crimes and going BACK across to avoid capture, I can understand the odd numbers. It is difficult to capture and convict those that simply leave, who are essentially here on a Spanish sex holiday, with no intention of joining a racist group like “La Raza”. But “racist” is sloppy language. It is more a difference of culture than of race. I for one want this nation to be one of sealed borders, legal immigrants, and where my children are protected from “Machismo” rape, the cult of kidnapping and other horrors of South of the Border stay in the culture that allows them.
Seems very funny you would overlook the victims of all these crimes to divert attention to the author. Here is what everyone needs to focus on.
If illegals were not in the country in the first place because they don’t belong here, then none of these crimes would have been commited.
The real issue is that U.S. immigration did not protect them as citizens of the united states and we have no security from criminals that sneak in and hurt US citizens.
It’s a shame that the strongest country in the world is not willing to defend it’s citizens and politicians only care about their own gains
Re #37:
What, it seems funny that on a math blog, I would focus on how an author is using a bogus argument to create fake numbers?
Yeah, that’s really just inexplicable. Makes no sense at all.
(As for the rest of your rubbish: what would happen if there were no illegals in America? Would it lower the crime rate? I don’t know. It would have a *huge* effect, and guessing all of the parameters of that effect is, frankly, beyond me.
A huge part of our economy relies on the cheap labor of illegal immigrants. (The fact that many people want you to ignore is that the group of people who lead the political movement to strictly enforce immigration laws are pretty much one and the same as the people who use cheap illegal labor. Very convenient, making damn sure that the people you’re abusing can’t complain without getting arrested, eh?)
So if you really got rid of the illegals, that would make the labor cost of many businesses to increase dramatically. Certainly farm labor costs would go through the roof. So would meat processing. So food prices would increase dramatically. But the people who wound up working for those industries would also be making a lot more money than the illegals doing the work now, and they’d be spending it here rather than sending it home. How would that end up balancing out? Would more people not be able to afford food, because the prices were so much higher? Or would the increased pay offset that?
I don’t know. My suspicion is that there’s no single answer to that. Odds are, in NYC, we’d see an *increase* in crime, because people in NYC aren’t going to be getting agricultural or meat processing jobs, so they’re not going to benefit from the increase in wages in those areas. But the price of food would go up. So a lot of people who are just getting by with our current low food prices wouldn’t be able to get by anymore.
On the other hand, out in rural areas, you’d probably see a significant decrease in unemployment, which would likely lead to a reduce in crime.
And on a third hand, the kind of border control that we’d need to eliminate illegals getting into the country would be hugely expensive. That’s another significant cost. Our borders are very long, and parts are extremely hard to patrol. Where’s the money to pay for that going to come from? And what impact is *that* going to have? Will we divert money from local law enforcement to border patrol? Or will we raise taxes?
In any case, it’s neither simple nor clear what the effects would be. I don’t have a clue of how to begin to model it mathematically – there are just too damn many unknowns.)
But none of that has anything to do with the point of this argument – which is that Dr. Schurman-Kauflin, the original author of the claim about illegal immigrants – is a liar who deliberately used dishonest math to back up a lie.
The real criminals are are at Fannie Mae, Freddie mac, etc. The housing fraud almost brought America to its knees. These big wig criminals are out there in Suburbia. They are the “True and patriotic Americans”.
Scary thing here is, there are statistics to be made…. There should’nt be any illegal immigrants here in the first place, to make statistics on or about. What about the victims who have no one to prosecute?
Scary thing here is, there are statistics to be made…. There should’nt be any illegal immigrants here in the first place, to make statistics on or about. What about the victims who have no one to prosecute?
This may have a lot to do with points of reference. I have daughters and am, by by native country’s (U.S.A.) standards, left-leaning.