Recently spent some time among people not like me - Republicans - and had a chance to get a mild dose of wingnuttery. The topic of conversation was immigration, and while this particular person was married to an immigrant - one of the good ones! - he was overly concerned about all the "bad apples" that were legally or illegally arriving here.
While there are presumably lots of things he might have meant by "bad apples," the most logical one is that they're criminals. In truth, immigrants are much less likely to be incarcerated the native born people.
This is certainly true. I'd imagine that most immigrants, even "illegal" ones, would do their best to stay on the right side of the law, if nothing more than to protect their chances of staying here. I think people on the side of this issue with concern for immigrants want to denigrate the majority in attempt to put them in league with lesser members of society. Let's be fair about this, these are people too. The fact that they don't speak english doesn't make them likely to commit crimes. Besides it's hard for cashiers to understand the phrase "ponga el dinero en el bolso"
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