Why Anna Flagg of the NYT is full of shit

Saturday, March 31, 2018 
A recent article in the New York Times by Anna Flagg called “The Myth of the Criminal Immigrant” proves just how right Mark Twain was when he said, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”The article based on a collaborative study by three prominent (and clearly liberal) universities, is so stock full of inappropriate and distorted fact as to go a long way to discrediting liberal attempts to discredit GOP claims of criminal activities and illegal immigrants.Since the purpose of the New York Times is to serve as a propaganda machine for a liberal readership distortion of fact should be expected, and the story is less designed to convince objective readers of the liberal case, than to reassure liberals about how right they are when it comes to opposing Trump immigration policies.The studies the article is based on not only distort reality but hides their real agenda by the liberal media to promote open borders and expansion of the Democratic voter base. The story is designed to assure liberals that we are not plunging back into the bad old days of the 1970s when it wasn’t safe for us to stroll through Central Park at night.The article opens with an unfair comparison to crime stats from the 1970s to now, showing how crime has plunged despite a massive increase in immigration.The GOP with their own stats paints a more accurate picture because it focuses on specific groups of “illegal” immigrant groups, in particular which ones engage in violent behavior.Crime overall has plummeted since the bad old days. But immigration is not related to its fall. The most significant factor for the rise and fall of crime over the last four decades has to do with the baby boom – that massive bulge in the population that began near the end of World War II and petered out in the mid-1960s.Crime rose and fell with a demographic largely tied to illicit drug use, peaking in the 1970s and early 1980s when babyboomers began to age out their 20s and 30s. We were all at the right age at the right time. So as babyboomers aged, crime declined.The fact that immigrant, legal or illegal rose during the period is an unrelated statistic. The criminal element that the GOP claims came with illegal immigration could not make up for the vast drop in age related crime population.Other factors for the drop in crime including odious enforcement of the Rockefeller laws, earlier intervention by law enforcement into minor crimes, and a massive increase in fire power and man power by law enforcement agencies.Having grown up in a home full of guns and NRA member, I discount the GOP claim that individual gun owners also deterred crime. There is almost no real evidence to support this claim.Flagg’s story distorts facts in a number of areas because it fails to distinguish between legal immigration and illegal immigration and so inflates the told numbers upon which her argument depends. She and the study she quotes depends on total immigration percentages, not illegal, and, fails to address the particular population the GOP is concerned with.Flagg along with most liberal media against the GOP claims of an uptick in crime skew their results by inflating the total base population, failing to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration, types of illegal immigration or even the age-related groups that typically commit crimes.Liberals like Flagg tend to claim that the GOP attack on the criminal element among portions of the illegal immigrant population is an attack on all immigrants – and so pump up the total numbers causing percentage of crime to fall.While Trump and the GOP are clearly do not like immigration, they clearly have focused on a group when claiming an increase in violent crimes.Legal immigrants are the most unlikely to commit crimes since they are motivated to come to the USA by ambition and in pursuit of the American Dream. They also have to jump through so many legal hoops to get access that they risk too much to ever involve themselves in illegal activities.Many of these are sponsored some corporation for their skills, and so become economic slave labor to corporate greed, too scared that they might lose their job and their green card.But even illegal immigrants fall into different categories.Some of these are people who lost their jobs and so have no greed card. Others have extended their student or other visas – a group so desperate to find another sponsor, they have little time or inclination to engage in violent crime.The illegal immigrants to GOP is concerned with fall into another category, people who have come into the country illegally, many continuing criminal activities they have engaged in before arriving here.This is not much different from previous immigration groups since before the American Civil War, good and bad arriving on ships that would later hover under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.While Flagg watered down the statistics and misrepresented the GOP’s arguments, the GOP has provided specific evidence of an upturn in crime, in particular, murder and manslaughter, focusing on specific areas of the country where these things show a significant increase among illegal immigrants with New York City one of the highest. While the Flagg story gives comfort to liberals that all immigrants are clearly not violent immigrants, it misdirects the GOP’s claim that a large portion of illegal immigrants in certain areas of the country are involved in violent crimes.Flagg’s article his dishonest because it incorporates unrelated crime trends to immigration as a way to dismiss the GOP’s case.This is not to say that the GOP’s policy towards immigration is good news for immigrants legal or illegal.The GOP wants to close borders to stop the expansion of the Democratic voting base.Democrats, who have largely abandoned white working class, see their future and control of the country by allowing more immigration to fill up their future voting ranks.The GOP by focusing on the increase in crime by a portion of the immigrant population hopes to scare its own voting base into supporting very restrictive immigration reform.The Democrats through media are desperate to quell this fear to keep Congress from restructuring immigration rules that would make it even more difficult for immigrants from specific countries to get into the United States legally.Flagg’s argument and her real agenda is not whether illegal immigrants bring in violent crime (GOP stats show this is true) but is a propaganda piece promoting open borders, and paints immigrants as peace-loving addition to America that pose no risk to people already living here. The Democrats argue that an attack on illegal immigration is an attack on all immigrants.This is largely dishonest, designed to keep legal immigrants from realizing that while they did everything right to get here, many of the illegal immigrants did not.The real issue is not about crime at all, but about revamping an immigration policy that is faired to all.Democrats want no restraint.The GOP wants to keep many people out.But what you get from Flagg’s article is propaganda.