Timeline for Did most Mexicans who are in the U.S. illegally, enter through legal means?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 25, 2017 at 16:13 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 1 character in body
|
| Jan 28, 2017 at 17:23 | comment | added | DavePhD | @Sklivvz I disagree because the entire population of illegal workers at each location is arrested in such operations. You could say it is biased towards people who work, or people who work at airports and other high security locations. | |
| Jan 28, 2017 at 14:43 | comment | added | Sklivvz | @DavePhD sorry I meant 9%. Showing that 9% of the arrested Mexicans came legally does not tell us anything about the rest of the Mexicans. | |
| Jan 28, 2017 at 14:36 | comment | added | DavePhD | @Sklivvz Regarding your first point, a maximum error that the addition of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras introduces can be calculated from the fraction of illegal aliens coming from each country immigration.procon.org/…. 4,680,000 from Mexico and only 880,000 from the other 3 countries in 2000. So even if we assume that 100% the people from the 3 other counties traveled through Mexico and then entered illegally, the 17% would only increase to 20%. (I don't understand your point about 8%.) | |
| Jan 28, 2017 at 9:14 | comment | added | Sklivvz | Neither of the two reasons you present shows than less than 17% of Mexicans came legally. The first shows that 17% is the average of a larger group, assuming it applies to every subgroup is a fallacy of division. The second shows that 8% of an unrepresentative sample applies to the whole. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 22:25 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 514 characters in body
|
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:27 | comment | added | DavePhD | @DanSmolinske If you look at the lists of locations (tables 6 and 7) they are very well distributed. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:27 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 17 characters in body
|
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:23 | comment | added | DavePhD | @dsollen The question is specifically about Mexican immigrants. Obviously illegal immigrants from New Zealand would be less likely to walk across the border. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:22 | comment | added | Dan Smolinske | @DavePhD There could still be a case if demographics are different (for example, the majority of ICE investigations concentrate on areas that favor illegal entries, while overstays tend to have jobs that ICE rarely looks at). But it seems unlikely the difference would be that great. At the very least it makes it hard to imagine overstays as a majority. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:21 | comment | added | dsollen | The GAO report itself states " These three alternative data sources on illegal immigrants indicate varying—but uniformly substantial—percentages of overstays: 31 percent, 27 percent, and 57 percent. " It also states numerous times that they believe the estimation of 1/3 of illegals being overstays from previous studies is an under estimation. I don't see how you can use this report as basis for a claim of less then 17% for overstays when the report itself states many times their estimation is for a higher value. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:16 | comment | added | DavePhD | @DanSmolinske These aren't general arrests. These were operations where ICE would investigate all the workers at a given location (a specific airport, all nuclear power plants, a shipbuilding location) and then suddenly move in and arrest all the relevant people. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:11 | comment | added | Dan Smolinske | @tsar I'm not making the claim either way. It's just that if arrest rates are different between overstays and illegal entries, then it is possible that overstays could still be a majority while making up a minority of arrests. So purely looking at that statistic isn't sufficient to refute the statement in the OP. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 17:58 | comment | added | DavePhD | @notstoreboughtdirt These operations targeted workers at high security locations like at airports. They would arrest everyone who was illegal. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 17:47 | comment | added | user36688 | I would guess DEA and Border Guard would head the list of security operations catching illegal presence. Both those are probably more likely to look for "EWI" than overstay issues. Another way to check numbers might be to look for an immigrants rights or Mexican-community group who conduct surveys of their people. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 16:42 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 2 characters in body
|
| Jan 27, 2017 at 16:34 | history | edited | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 180 characters in body
|
| Jan 27, 2017 at 16:22 | comment | added | T. Sar | @DanSmolinske How you'll give the numbers that they are more abundant if they aren't getting caught? You have to somehow measure the number of immigrants to give this sort of statistic, and the evidence we have up to now points to the other direction. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 16:20 | comment | added | Dan Smolinske | This doesn't seem definitive - if overstays are significantly less likely to be caught, then they could make up a majority of illegals while still having smaller arrest numbers (not saying that's the case, but I haven't seen numbers either way). | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 15:46 | history | answered | DavePhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |