Talk:Illegal immigration to the United States

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 July 2019 and 15 August 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eiturio (article contribs).

Edits Needed for Grammar, Clarity

I don't meet the requirements for editing a semi-protected article. Can someone please fix this for me?

In the overview (the first section, before the comments), the second-to-last sentence reads:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being in the country illegally – have no statistically meaningful impact on crime or reduce the crime rate."

Logically speaking, it's redundant to say they have no statistically meaningful impact on crime and also that they don't reduce the crime rates. But first, just grammatically speaking, it should read:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being in the country illegally – have no statistically meaningful impact on crime, nor do they reduce the crime rate."

This is still syntactically incorrect though, because as-written, this sentence means sanctuary cities reduce the crime rate, which isn't what the author was trying to say, because that is either incomplete or nonsensical. I'm pretty sure they were trying to indicate that sanctuary cities do not have different crime rates or lower crime rates (again, redundant) solely by dint of being sanctuary cities. Also, "statistically meaningful" is a weird way to say "statistically significant", so I changed that too. Finally, "designed to not prosecute" is a) awkwardly worded and b) confusing, so I fixed that too. All told, if I am interpreting the author correctly, a better way to put this is:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to prevent the prosecution of people solely for being in the country illegally – do not have statistically significant differences in crime rates when compared to non-sanctuary cities with comparable traits."

BUT! If I'm wrong about what the original author meant and they were trying to say that sanctuary cities don't impact crime rates in the larger region they are in, though, it should be:

"Sanctuary cities – which adopt policies designed to prevent the prosecution of people solely for being in the country illegally – do not have any statistically significant impact on regional crime rates."

AN ADDENDUM FROM ANOTHER VIEWER: I would like to know what type of statistical test and the significance level being employed to determine 'statistical significance/ non-significance'. Were the data employed fulfilling the assumptions of randomness, normal distribution and equal variances? If not, were they appropriately transformed? Simply failing to reject the alternative hypothesis does not necessarily mean the null hypothesis is correct - in conducting the test in this case, one has simply failed to reject the null hypothesis.

Please stop abusing inferential statistics to make political cases. The references provided are not academic, peer-reviewed papers. They are linked to think-tank and news agencies that have had political connections for decades and often employ poor statistical rigour or none at all.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.145.95.151 (talk • contribs) 18:05, November 30, 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely not neutral

The section about crimes committed by illegal immigrants is so biased and not-neutral. At least read this materials from US Congress, to see how illegal immigration is connected with gang violence [1], the name is "IMMIGRATION AND THE ALIEN GANG EPIDEMIC: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS". Dont forget this is Wikipedia, and not a political instrument for propaganda. M.Karelin (talk) 11:34, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Congress is not a reliable source, and a hearing transcript is a classic example of a primary source. Wikipedia is primarily based on reliable secondary sources. I have reverted your addition because it is not an improvement. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 13:28, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

"Congress is not a reliable source" - well, one of the most weird statements I ever heard....At least check the list of the "WITNESSES" in that document: they are members of Governmental agencies. And you are telling me they are not reliable sources ?? Hmmm, that's why this article is very biased and not-neutral. M.Karelin (talk) 23:04, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Please review identifying reliable sources. Wikipedia should be primarily based on reliable secondary sources, not primary sources such as Congressional hearing transcripts. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:29, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Relationship between illegal immigration and crime

In the section on this in the articles, I added an assertion here saying, "A 2005 House hearing opened withy an assertion that it was 'apparent that aliens are members of many of the most violent gangs in America.'" (my typo there appeared in my addition), supported by a cite of: "IMMIGRATION AND THE ALIEN GANG EPIDEMIC: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS : HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, BORDER SECURITY, AND CLAIMS OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION". commdocs.house.gov. April 13, 2005. That was reverted here with an edit summary saying, "that is a claim that should be supported by peer-reviewed research, not partisan rhetoric at a House hearing 20 yrs ago". I maintain that the source I cited is sufficient support for the assertion I made. It also seems to me that my added assertion adds some meat to the bones of that section, but I don't really know enough about this article subtopic to discuss that much. I have not undone the reversion. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:20, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

As we can see, this article is clearly violates WP:NPOV. They claimed (see above) that "Congress is not a reliable source". Facepalm And that is regardless of the list of the Witnesses (see the document). That hearings were bipartisan (members of the Committee from both parties were there). But no one cares. They just deleted the info. No neutrality in this article at all. M.Karelin (talk) 23:12, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

That's right, Congress is not a reliable secondary source. Secondary sources are newspapers, magazines, reputable web publications, academic journals, etc. A Congressional hearing transcript is the definition of a primary source, and the uses of primary sources on Wikipedia are extremely limited. Please read and understand Wikipedia sourcing policies before editing further. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:27, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Some quotes from this [2] document: 1) Immigration and Customs Enforcement conservatively puts the number of illegals in Mara Salvatrucha as a “majority;” police officers, by contrast, assert that the gang is overwhelmingly illegal. 2) The L.A. County Sheriff reported in 2000 that 23% of inmates in county jails were deportable, according to the New York Times. 3) The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002. 4) In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide in the first half of 2004 (which totaled 1,200 to 1,500) targeted illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) were for illegal aliens. (end of quotes). And those are only part of the document (the Testimony under oath before Congress). M.Karelin (talk) 23:40, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

The Manhattan Institute is a conservative policy shop and their opinions must be cited as such. Why are you citing data points from 15 and 20 years ago? This isn't 2002 or 2004, it's 2021. Surely there's some more recent evidence, or are you suggesting that this was a problem in the past but is no longer a problem now? We have multiple cited studies from the last five years which say that illegal immigration is not linked to increased crime - against this you have put up a hearing transcript from 16 years ago, and are proposing to use data from more than two decades ago. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:27, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

1) Did you even noticed, that all information provided by them is based on official facts and statistics provided by Law Enforcement agencies, such as LAPD or LA county sheriff ?? 2) Why only "liberal policy shops" can have opinion here ?? 3) About the date of the hearings: do you have any evidences, that since 2006 less illegal immigrants are becoming members of very dangerous street gangs ? What have changed since then ? M.Karelin (talk) 02:20, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

1) Fifteen-year-old raw data from a single jurisdiction is of limited utility in an article focusing on current conditions across the United States. Much preferred would be actual large-scale analyses of broader data sets from across the country - which is what we have in the current article. 2) Which study cited in the current section was conducted by a "liberal policy shop"? I'm seeing lots of citations to reputable academic journals here. 3) It's not up to me to prove a negative - the burden is on you to justify inclusion of a single 20-year-old data point about a single street gang in a single city. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 02:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

(1) Aliens =/= illegal immigrants. This is something that gets brought up all the time on the immigration-related pages here. Possibly because of the same anti-immigration 4chan copypastas that repeat the same talking points and sources for fringe assertions about the evils of illegal immigrants. (2) Non-aliens are also part of these gangs. Should that be mentioned? How about we focus instead on the vast body of peer-reviewed literature (or even non-peer-reviewed high-quality RS) that focus on the broad relationships between illegal immigration and crime rather than anecdotes? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 01:39, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

1) We know that, and all that data is about illegal immigrants - believe me, members of Congress can distinguish illegal immigrants from others; 2) You can mention that, but this article is about illegal immigrants. When you read the section about crime (Relationship between illegal immigration and crime), it looks like they are not committing any crimes here, which is very much not true. The section is clearly violates WP:NPOV. Sad !! M.Karelin (talk) 02:28, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Wtmitchell A bare assertion by a politician at a 16-year-old Congressional hearing doesn't seem to merit inclusion here, particularly given the primary source nature. What does it add to our article? Surely many aliens are *not* members of "the most violent gangs in America," and many citizens are also members of "the most violent gangs in America." We don't need to include unsupported and unrevealing truisms - we have actual, recent, peer-reviewed data to provide our readers. Obfuscating the clear consensus of reliable sources and academic research that illegal immigration does not materially contribute to crime in America by "contrasting" it with 16-year-old partisan political rhetoric seems to materially make the article worse, not improve it. For that reason, I oppose inclusion of the material. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:40, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I stumbled across this by happenstance and don't have enough specific interest in the topic to get into a debate over details. I will remark that Wikipedia is not a political newsletter, and WP articles generally take a view wider than the situation which is of strong political concern when documented in WP articles (I put that badly but I'm not going to take the trouble to restate it). FWIW, this edit is what caught my attention and caused me to look at the article -- the link to the cited supporting source was dead, and digging up an alternative led to my edit and its cite.The content of the section is one-sided enough to make me wonder about WP:DUE for alternative views. However, I'll leave debating that to others who may be more interested in pursuing this subtopic than I. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 07:56, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

The current section does not include any quotes from politicians - only cited scientific studies. The proper contrast to the current section, if any exists, would be similar peer-reviewed scientific studies which find that illegal immigration increases crime. We do not have to create WP:FALSEBALANCE - if all the science is on one "side" of the issue, then that's the end of it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 14:14, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

U.S. Marines scandal

HHelmsley10 and 21TVXQ , I reverted the section about the Marines "scandal" for the reasons given in my edit summary: (1) this is a non-notable incident, (2) smuggling happens all the time (3) this is not an "international controversiy". 21TVXQ, no need to shout at me, and this seem like a reasonable story to add here cause it shows corruption for both sides is not a good reason to include something in Wikipedia. So, instead of edit-warring, I invited you both to discuss it here at the talk page. The section was added, reverted, so the next step should be to discuss it here. -- Mvbaron (talk) 18:27, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Mvbaron ---- Jayron32 Why am I being accused of edit warring? After my edit was undone I don't undo/revert again. To me seemed reasonable to keep it here because I think it shows ways how illegal immigrants receive help from both sides or how they get here. The article saying a Mexican state Yucatan helps illegals with a guide and Id cards so showing both sides is fair and neutral. - -- 21TVXQ (talk) 15:49, 19 April 22. 2021 (UTC)

Can you please show me where I accused you of edit warring? I'll answer your other questions once you acknowledge that I did no such thing. --Jayron32 16:14, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi 21TVXQ, I didn't accuse you of edit warring (EDIT: sorry I kinda did, you reverted my revert, so I said instead of edit warring I'm happy to retract it), I pinged you because you might be interested in a discussion about the section you re-added after I reverted the initial BOLD edit for the reasons above. --Mvbaron (talk) 16:19, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Jayron32 I tagged/included you here because you're the one that undid my edit revert and thought you should part of this debate. I was referring to Mvbaron when I said editing warring. I al ready give my reason here, (see above) why I think it should be readded. - -- 21TVXQ (talk) 16:34, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I have no pony in this race. Instead, I just want to see the issue with the disputed text worked out on the talk page. Once consensus is reached, it can be re-added as far as I am concerned. We don't have consensus yet, and disputes need to be worked out on the talk page and not continuously adding the same text over and over. --Jayron32 16:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello editors Mvbaron, Jayron32, and 21TVXQ. I open for a discussion and I do not want any problems. "International controversies" could perhaps be renamed to "Controversies"? I noticed that within this article there is a section called "military involvement"; maybe moving there is a better option, or should it be moved to another article such as this one? Illegal immigration to the United States and crime. Also for your claim of it not being notable seems not to be true. Here is a youtube video with over 1 million views from the CBS channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7_mK2js9yw Fox news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1zxAti1_TM and ABC news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM2y55wmLVw covered the story too. Also I agree what 21tvxq said about Wikipedia Neutral point of view. -- HHelmsley (talk) 1:52, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

HHelmsley, hi thanks for the discussion, First of all, a youtube video is no reliable source and not usable as guarantee for notability really (coverage in notable newspapers is). Re-reading the proposed text, I have my doubts about the notability of the accident. I think the following is too detailed and unimportant:

The ring leader of the human smuggling operation was identify as Francisco Saul Rojas-Hernandez. Some of the Marines in court said Francisco Saul Rojas-Hernandez would pay them $1,000 per person that they helped transport.[113][114] 8 Marines plead guilty, however some of the Marines had their charges dropped after a judge said that the arrest of the 16 Marines in front of a battalion formation was a violation of their rights. The U.S. Marine Corps still took administrative or judicial action against the 24 Marines involved. According to 1st Lieutenant Cameron Edinburgh, one Marine received a general discharge under honorable conditions, at least one Marine received a dishonorable discharge, two received bad conduct discharges, and 19 received other than honorable discharges. The Navy sailor was also removed from service with a bad conduct discharge.[115]

If the incident is notable enough, there will be some better reliable sources (national newspapers) that report on it too and give more relvant details. In any case, if you ask me, I guess I don't have anything against the text until the quote above, but I wasn't the only one who was against the insertion of the text. --Mvbaron (talk) 06:56, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Mvbaron Okay, here is one from the NY times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/marines-human-smuggling.html and Businessinsider https://www.businessinsider.com/24-marines-discharged-after-human-trafficking-and-drug-allegations-2020-2 The youtube videos that I provided are from the official CBS, Fox news, and ABC news channels. Nobility is not an issue. The only Wikipedia user that had a problem was Snooganssnoogans and he reverted my edit without a summary explaining why. I don't know why you have an issue with the other half of the story. The other half gives detail on who was the leader of the crimes committed and what happened to the ones involved. If I left that part out it would have been most likely reverted for being "incomplete". I added good sources and it was well written explaining details from start to finish. I'll vote for re-add. -- HHelmsley (talk) 17:56, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

"Illegal immigration" vs. "'Illegal or undocumented immigration"

This is a WP:BRD discussion. Here, I've reverted an edit which changed this in the WP:FIRSTSENTENCE of this article. The edit summary of the reverted change read: (undocumented immgrants is a term recommended by UN). I looked for a UN document where this recommendation was made, and the closest I found was this mention of General Assembly Resolution No. 3449/XXX. UN, 1975 titled Measures to ensure the human rights and dignity of all migrant workers., and that does not appear to justify this more general change. @Tomastvivlaren -- did you have something more general in mind? Please discuss below if needed. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:20, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Trends?

Currently the trend section states that:

In 2017, illegal border crossing arrests hit a 46-year low, and were down 25% from the previous year.[76] NPR stated that immigrants may be less likely to attempt to enter the U.S. illegally because of President Trump's stance on illegal immigration.[77][78] 

Considering these graphics from the recent 2019 homeland report (btw the graphics in the article are outdated by couple of years) there seem to be no trend even the opposite, and in either case this event doesn't seem to be more than blip that was given undue weight with clickbait title about '46-year low'. Furthermore the homeland report states notable trends, it made no such note here. So we need some better sources here that actually states that there has been a trend and or actually put things into context. --77.127.97.155 (talk) 06:24, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 18 September 2021

• Illegal immigration to the United States → Undocumented immigration to the United States
• Illegal immigration to the United States and crime → Undocumented immigration to the United States and crime
• Illegal immigrant population of the United States → Undocumented immigrant population of the United States
• Illegal immigration to New York City → Undocumented immigration to New York City

– WP:NEUTRAL term. The Hill Bloomberg NPR. Voice of America Vox The New York Times NBC News CBS News Forbes The Economist ABC News CNN Politico The Christian Science Monitor Newsweek USA Today NPR WP:COMMONNAME. Showiecz (talk) 21:16, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. The sources listed within the nomination are in the top tier of WP:RELIABLE SOURCES. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 20:22, 18 September 2021 (UTC)