Studies That Claim Immigrants Are Less Likely To Commit Crime?

As a new citizen, I learn quickly that New York Times seems to  have an agenda.  When I was growing up, my grandparents who fled a very brutal communist regime in the 1950s always told me that the communist dictator back in their home country always commanded all kinds of "scientific" studies to specifically meet his "expectation". Any scientists whose studies showed results that deviated from the dictator's political agenda were sent to labor camp if it was a lucky day, or they were quickly executed if it was just a regular day.  As a result, all newspapers back in my grandparents' home country were always reporting studies that showed skewed statistics. Yes, this is what having no free-press is all about!  This is why my grandparents fled their country they loved so very much.  No, they didn't flee here to the USA. If only they did, my life in the USA would have been so much easier. Why I came to the USA as an immigrant belongs to another post. Let me go back to what I think of the New York Times.

Recently, I read an article from the New York Times claiming how several studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crime, my mind immediately questions, "What immigrants? Legal immigrants or the illegal immigrants?"  New York Times quotes the studies as if all immigrants are the same and we are just one single homogeneous group of law abiding good people.  This is how my grandparents' native country treated the citizens, "Everybody is the same and everybody has to live the same way, think the same way, make the exact same amount of money and wear the same clothes!  Doctors can work in the mines and farmers can work as doctors.  Anyone can perform any job assigned by the government because everybody is supposed to have equal ability and there is no difference in talents or intelligence." Sometimes I wonder if Marxism was inspired by Karl Marx's admiration for the ants.  From his photo, Karl Marx looked like a crazy man who carried that vibe of insanity like other morons such as Hilter or Stalin.  I will definitely flee the USA if someone like Karl Marx is winning big in elections.  I learnt from my grandparents that one has to flee early when a lunatic is on the rise to power before it's too late.

This is why New York Times scares me sometimes.  It reminds me of the press that my grandparents had in their native country.  New York Times' idea of immigrants are all the same, and it loves to quote studies that support this idea.  So the studies quoted by New York Times were based on some U.S. census data.  But who are more likely to be included in a census, or who is more likely to participate in census?  Do you think as undocumented illegal aliens, you will be eagerly participating in any surveys or be willing to be included in any government data?  Undocumented means "undocumented", and most "undocumented" immigrants aren't traceable and they prefer to not be tracked by any government authority. I never lived the life of an "undocumented" immigrant, but I would definitely not want to be tracked if I were an "undocumented" immigrant.  So how can any study collect any meaningful data on undocumented immigrants?   But I guess, the studies can always use what they know about, which is us, "the legal immigrants"!  I bet they can just use the known data about us and extrapolate it to include both legal and illegal immigrants, despite the fact that "illegal immigration" is itself a crime, and all illegal immigrants had already committed a crime the minute they knowingly overstayed their visas, or they knowingly sneaked into the USA without proper travel documents.  So any study that claims immigrants commit less crime can "only" refer to legal immigrants.  And how can such studies on "immigrants" prove President Trump's executive order on illegal immigration to be wrong?  No, they can't. One can't tell how oranges are supposed to taste like based on a previous taste test of apples.

Yes, as "legal immigrants", we are less likely to commit crimes.  We don't need to do any study and we know because if we aren't such law-abiding people, why did we choose to go through so much hassle to embark on such a long journey to move to the USA "legally"?  There are so many shortcuts but we didn't take one, we chose the long painful legal path because we are always so paranoid about any possibility of violating the law.  We are a bunch of  people who are phobic of crimes, who are obsessed about doing everything right and in the process, often overthink and put ourselves under unnecessary stress.  For example, we even worry about whether we are signing our "Certificate of Citizenship" correctly!  If only you google such topic, you see our paranoia.

Of course, people like us are less likely to commit crimes, we will die of sleeplessness and worries of ever violating the law before we commit a crime.  But this certainly isn't true for those who took the chance to be smuggled into the USA. This certainly isn't true for those who knowingly overstayed their visas.  I always wonder how can these people sleep at night? But they certainly can or else how can so many be living illegally in the USA for so many years?  I seriously don't know how they can live like this.  I would have gone insane by the fear of the consequence of being an illegal immigrant. But may be it's because I came from a free country where the standard of living is high and where opportunities to prosper is abundant.  I don't want to judge all illegal immigrants, but it certainly upsets me when the media group legal immigrants like myself with the illegal immigrants, as if we are all the same.

Anyone can tell that illegal immigrants have very different mindsets and they have a very different decision making process from the legal immigrants.  We don't think the same way and we don't make decision in the same manner, despite the fact that many of us come from the same country and the same culture.  We have very different level of tolerance in terms of illegal activities!

Yes, New York Times scares me because it reminds me of the press that my grandparents had in their native country.  The theory that all immigrants are the same is so flawed and the scary part was how the New York Times is propagating this flawed and biased theory as the Newton's law of universal gravitation.  Now as a new citizen, I realize that even in the USA, I can see similar media that once held my grandparents' native nation behind the miserable iron-curtain for decades. What a surprise.