I also don't want to imply I am saying anyone is racist. Lots of people are against immigration for reasons that, while I don't agree with them, are not inherently objectionable. The article was comparing immigrants to native whites, which makes sense because most illegal immigrants are non-white and because that's the popular comparison in the public mind. Also, I don't mean to barge into other folks' conversations. It's just a widely-held misconception about the alleged criminal nature of unauthorized immigrants (or immigrants in general).

ok, then here, and really i want to stick to crimes outside the misdemeanors, ok? I dont care if someone pissed on the street when they were drunk. Does not really hurt anyone.

And just for the record, EVERY Illegal has at leat one crime against them, so I am sure I am right they are the biggest...lol

Now, 24-30% of all Federal inmates are illegals. Depends on the source you look at. We can toss articles out there day and night, but if in 2010 (the most recent one I can seem to find) roughly 1/4 or more of our inmates are illegals, can you please tell me how they are not doing it?

However, again, 100% are illegal and have done a federal crime.

Stressed, if your Venn diagram of "unauthorized immigrants" and "illegal immigrants" overlap entirely, then I believe you are incorrect; not all "illegal immigrants" have committed federal crimes. Overstaying a visa is a civil offense.

I don't think that those numbers are correct about federal inmates, but let's go with them anyway. First: does that count people being held for immigration-related offenses? If so, that's kind of tilting the board, because there's millions of people out there who would qualify. Second: immigrants are primarily young men. As a youngish man myself, I know from both personal experience and statistical evidence that young men are the most crime-prime age and gender group. Third: many immigrants are poor, and our current system shuts them out of the political and economic mainstream. Naturally that could make them more prone to criminal behavior.

That stat about inmates is an old Lou Dobbs lie.

He said 1/3 of federal inmates were illegal, of course even according to his own numbers (the 2000 DoJ figures) the figure was 27%, and it wasn't illegal immigrants it was for non-citizens period - both legal & illegal immigrants.

The number of non-citizens being in federal prison declined to 20% by 2005, and again that figure includes legal immigrants.

So that 1/3 figure is just a lie.

If it were the case that illegal immigrants were running around committing crimes, why aren't state prisons filled with them? They (non-citizens in general) make up less than 5% of state prisoners. The percentage of non-citizens who are in prison is less than the percentage of non-citizens who live in the US.

Why in a country made up og 99% immigrants are people so racist?
I guess for one group to gain some social status they just put down another and there is some sort of pecking order. In England because of the class system we don't have this problem, we know our place in society.

You don't have this problem? You have a much smaller immigrant population and every election season the voters go ballistic about the few that are there. Seriously if we had the strict "only admit the wealthy" immigration policy the Tory government in the UK had, the whole of Europe would be calling us Nazis every day.

Remember the riots you guys had not that long ago? I couldn't stop reading comments on UK newspapers about how its all the blacks & immigrants fault.

@Putin, I don't think NigeeBaby was serious when he said that 'knowing our place {at the bottom of a class system}' prevented us (the English) from being racist.

I agree with your assessment of the Tory's immigration policy,

From Factcheck.org

"30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens."

Both of these claims can be traced back to that same April 1, 2006, episode of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on CNN, in the same segment, with the same correspondent, Christine Romans. But the e-mail misrepresents what Romans said. She gave figures for people who are "not U.S. citizens," a category that would include legal residents as well as "illegal aliens."

Romans said that "according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 30 percent of federal prisoners are not U.S. citizens," adding that "most are thought to be illegal aliens." Actually, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not keep figures on illegal immigrants. What solid numbers we can find point to a much smaller figure. A Department of Justice report from 2003 found that only 1.6 percent of the state and federal prison populations was under Immigration and Customs Enforcement jurisdiction, and thus known to be illegal immigrants. Half of these prisoners were detained only because they were here illegally, not for other crimes.

The Bureau of Prisons does track prisoners by offense when information is available. By that metric, 10.7 percent of prisoners in federal jails were incarcerated for immigration offenses in 2009. In 2006, when Romans gave her report, the figure was 10.2 percent.

The "$3 million dollar a day" figure is based on the false assumption that 30 percent of all inmates are illegal immigrants, and thus is greatly inflated.

http://voices.yahoo.com/statistics-crimes-commited-illegal-aliens-434946.html

From 2007

TC, my point is, someone posted something claiming that 1st generation Hispanics had a lower crime rate than Whites, and that is clearly NOT the case. These are jsut the illegals, this is not even all hispanics.

The border states are DYING from it

Xenophobia is a hardwired cognitive disposition that is impervious to empirical modification.

TC, I didnot bring race into this thing, someone else did. Try reading. I am responding to someone elses post about how whites hada higher % chance of crime than 1st generation hispanics.

Ignorance is a hardwired cognitive dispostion that is impervious to logical thought.

"The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people."

From John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
For those who aren't familiar with literature the quote pertains to Californian's attitudes towards Okies and Arkies heading west during the Dust Bowl.

and again, ignoring why race was ever brought up in the first place, and it was NOT BY ME.

"http://voices.yahoo.com/statistics-crimes-commited-illegal-aliens-434946.html"

Dude this report repeats the same dishonest statistics yet again. The FBI never produced any numbers that said "30% of inmates are illegal aliens". That's just sloppy.