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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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In a previous open thread, the topic of immigration in Europe came up. At the time Sweden was being discussed and it was unclear to what extent immigrants were contributing to crime and other social problems. Unfortunately Sweden's publicly accessible data isn't sufficient to really dig into the issue.

Then I discovered this link which actually does address the issue of immigrant crime in Europe quite directly, albeit in Denmark instead of Sweden. It also addresses issues such as welfare use. As it turns out the racist right wing seems to be completely correct on facts.

Financial Contribution

Danes and western immigrants to Denmark are, on average, positive contributors to Denmark during their working years. The same is true, though less so, of "Other non western". However it turns out that the controversial group of immigrants - MENAPT (Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey) - are net negative contributors at every age.

A breakdown by country (for countries with at least 5000 immigrants to Denmark) is provided and the result is exactly what the far right would predict: white people, Indians and Chinese make good immigrants and contribute positively to Denmark. The average American benefits Denmark to the tune of about $12k/year, the average Indian a little bit less. The average Somalian costs Denmark about $18k. Thais, Vietnamese and Filipinos are net neutral.

Crime

Western immigrants commit crime at rates more or less equivalent to Danes. Non-western immigrants commit about 3.5x more violent crime (including murder) and 7x more rape.

Crime rates can be further broken down by country of origin. After adjusting for age and gender, we find that again the racist far right are entirely correct in their views. Somalians have crime rates about 7x that of Danes. Americans, British, Indians and Chinese have crime rates about half that of Danes. I was surprised to see that Israelis and Thais have higher than average crime rates.

Conclusion

In countries where data is available (such as Denmark and the US), said data strongly supports the position of educated internet right wing racists. Some countries, such as Sweden, try to obfuscate the data as much as possible to the point of not describing criminals.

I argue that the most reasonable thing we can do is assume that for nearby countries more or less similar patterns apply even if we lack data drilling down at the level of individual subgroups.

(I use "educated" as an important caveat. I do not necessarily expect a random American racist to make distinctions between Indians and Pakistanis, though a random Brit might. However the typical racist motte poster certainly does.)

In countries where data is available (such as Denmark and the US), said data strongly supports the position of educated internet right wing racists.

What US data is that? Because I have largely seen the opposite. And see here.

The internet racists will say:

  • Crime by American blacks is very high

  • Crime by hispanic immigrants, particularly illegal ones, is higher than native whites but might be lower than native blacks

  • Similarly, expect high crime by hispanic natives (but less than blacks)

  • Crime by legal immigrants will be lower. Very few Salesforce Integration Engineers on an H1B visa or Abuelas brought to the US on a family reunification visa do crimes.

  • Crime by immigrant Somalians will probably also be high.

  • Crime by native whites is low

  • Crime by white immigrants, such as British or Danes, will also be low

  • Crime by immigrant Indians and Chinese will be very low

Do you disagree with these claims?

Neither of your sources has much to say about them. Your sources claim that the average of immigrant Hispanics and Chinese is lower than the average of native whites and native blacks.

It's odd that they didn't disaggregate the crimes of natives in such an obvious way, or break down immigrant crime by country of origin. Why do you think they didn't?

Crime by native whites is low

It looks low in comparison to the AA rate, but the US white-offender homicide rate is still higher than most developed European countries' total rate (and many of the poorer ones as well). Even if you assume that none of the "unknown" in the first link below are white, it's still 2.1 per 100,000. If you use the distribution of victims as an estimate (2nd link) since most murders are same-race, you get 2.5; if we assume the unknowns are distributed the same as the knowns (41% white), then we get just under 3. Countries such as Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, France, the UK, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are all below 2, as well as Poland, Spain, Albania, and Croatia, among others.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-2.xls

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Vital_statistics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Just acknowledge that you agree with them.

Please refrain from telling others what they believe. This sort of thing adds only heat, no light. Don't post like this.

From my first comment:

data strongly supports the position of educated internet right wing racists.

What more would you like?