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Comment by jsankey | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing offensive about it, this certainly is plausible and need not be due to any inherent racial differences. But you really should back up your claims with evidence rather than copping out as in your last sentence. If anything the omission of statistics makes it more likely someone will attack you rather than debate the facts.

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The statistics on this are fairly clear, but not very well published. It would certainly be possible to dig them up, but a comprehensive review would require a bit of work. You could find this in the official statistics, but newspaper folks are reluctant to compile them and put them on the front page.

In Norway, the per-capita rate of violent robberies, burglaries and violent rape is overwhelmingly larger in immigrant populations than the native. But it's a bit taboo to discuss this in polite company.

And yet, when you control for other biases (like income level, employment status, adult figures in household), this difference between immigrants and non-immigrants seem to disappear... almost like the defining factor is not where you (or your parents) were born, but more like your relative position in the society. Strange, huh?

Can you prove this? It's the first time I have heard someone make this claim, although it seems like something which is reasonable to test for.

I'd say it's generally believed to be the truth in Sweden, however, it's a heavily politicized question. Crime statistics are very complex and immigration is such a political hot potato that mixing the two together makes it nearly unworkable.

Proving criminals are innocent victims of poverty and class is difficult unless you are of Marxist persuasion. Statistics related to immigration and crime are obscure, as definitions of crimes change and entire classes of statistics are forbidden to do for political reasons (e.g. tracking offender's race or religion)

However, one point of view is that it's the opposing viewpoint that must be proven. It's also hard to prove that being "immigrant" or "non-european" is causing you to be a criminal, unless you are a nationalist.

Personally, I'd say it's asking the wrong question. We want to reduce crime and poverty, and the question is how to do it. If it was easy to prevent poverty, it would be done already. And frankly, if Sweden hasn't prevented poverty "enough" when non-working immigrants are provided with food, clothes, housing, cable-TV and mobile phones, then when is it really prevented?

Example sources: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/gruppsida.aspx?programid=3615&g... http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/brottslighet-bland-inva... http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Advokaten/Tidningsnummer/2010... http://www.bgf.nu/faktabanken/kriminalitet/brabra2.html

and I'm not writing a dissertation in sociology here, unless you want to give me enough bitcoins :)

Let's assume what you say is true, why, still, should I support immigration, when almost all immigrants are from social groups where 'income level, employment status, adult figures in household' are in a range where crime is high?

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