Slimebeast said:
Desperation a main cause for crime. Oh, com'on. Bullshit. And are you really saying that immigrants' criminal ratio is the same as that of the native population? Just stop. That's a huge insult. Why do you think so badly of your own people?? |
No. I said legal immigrants are likely have the same criminal ratio as the population of the country that they are entering, and I think that is correct, as Mafoo has already covered.
But where mafoo didn't defend my comment about desperation, I will. Mafoo looked at it on a domestic scale, and I don't think that works as I'm talking about these factors on a global scale. He is in essence correct with his statement, there is no real correlation between crime and poverty on a domestic scale in the west. In a rich country like the USA even the poorest get things like access to basic medical care, subsidies for food and child benefits, which all aid them into not resorting to a life of crime through desperation, and if they do, these countries have the infrastructure to deal with criminal activity. But this doesn't work on a global scale, which is what I'm saying.
Do you think that the pirates (essentially thieves) in Somalia resort to such a lifestyle out of choice? Do you think they do it because it is cool? It would need a pretty blinkered view of the world to think that. Or do you think they do it because they live in one of the poorest countries of the world? Where they don't even have a legitimate government, let alone one that could support them.
I can cite examples like this over and over again where crime is a byproduct of desperation; the drug cartels of South America, the corrupt governments of Africa, the high rates of counterfeit goods manufacturing in Asia, etc...
On a whole the world is not a nice place to live, and unfortunately people in some of the poorest areas crime is just a way of life.
I wish I could get some statistics but unfortunately in a lot of these places they don't even have a structured government to capture the criminals and measure the crime rates properly, so most of the statistics only account for first world countries, which is unfortunate.
But I would like to leave you with an anecdote from the Somalian singer K'naan (he did the "wave your flag" song for the world cup)...
"All Somalis know that gangsterism isn't to brag about. The kids that I was growing up with [in Rexdale] would wear baggy [track] suit pants, and a little jacket from Zellers or something, and they'd walk into school, and all the cool kids would be like, 'Ah, man, look at these Somalis. Yo, you're a punk!' And the other kid won't say nothing, but that kid, probably, has killed fifteen people."
