Immigration is an important issue but three of the last five posts here at MassPoliticsProfs have touched on the topic. Is it that important? Are there more important issues we could be discussing but aren’t noticing for some reason? Last week I was obsessed by the Massachusetts Republican Party Convention; this week, nothing.
This phenomenon and some of the comments we’ve had here at MPP have me thinking about politics and the human mind; a fascinating topic that I am curious about but I warn you, I am “undocumented” in the field; so these are musings.
I suppose I was consumed first with the convention and then with immigration because of the availability bias. The three MassPoliticsProfs attended the Mass. GOP Convention and we knew that the delegate vote for governor was very close in terms of whether or not Mark Fisher would get his 15% to be on the ballot. We left before the state committee announced that Fisher did not meet the threshold but I found out about it the next day. Then because I serve as UMassBoston’s Faculty Council parliamentarian I sensed that the Mass GOP’s interpretation of how to count ballots was problematic. Otherwise I might not have paid much attention to the controversy.
Then stories about immigration became widely available in the news media in part because of the visit of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley to the Mexican border with other prelates to say mass and push for immigration reform. My research interests include Catholic political influence in Massachusetts so, bingo! Also like many Boston Irish I grew up hearing various versions of the old “no Irish need apply” story and one reaction I have is, if we didn’t like how the Yankees treated our ancestors, then why should we then turn around and treat present day new groups even worse? (Availability also means it is easier to write these posts; minimal research needed).
This morning Professor Duquette posted Drivers Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants and Dr. Ed, one of our favorite commenters here at MPP, responded thus:
US Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) did a study — he reviewed the statistics from all 50 states — using the Library of Congress the way that only a Congressman can — and he determined that illegal aliens kill 50 Americans each and every day.
According to Dr. Ed, half of these were OUIs and half some sort of homicide. Moreover says Dr. Ed “It’s academically dishonest to challenge his argument without challenging his statistics, and he claims to have found this amongst the public data in the Library of Congress…”
I don’t have any doubt that the Library of Congress offers great data, but I’m not so sure about Rep. King’s statistical analysis. I suspect that he went to the LoC looking to “prove” something negative about undocumented immigrants – and voila, he did! If he followed the methods I know Dr. Ed would endorse though, Rep. King would have started with a null hypothesis – something like undocumented immigrants are no more likely to cause auto fatalities than others – and then see where the data leads. If he rejects the null hypothesis, he would have a stronger case.
Then I wonder if I am calumniating against Rep. King (because I am biased in thinking he is a dim bulb), who might actually be interested not in undocumented immigrants but in addressing the leading causes of death among Americans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010 all accidents were the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. I admit I did not further research to see if there is a statistic within that broader category for automobile fatalities caused by inebriated undocumented immigrants. The leading cause of death is heart disease, then cancer, respiratory diseases, stroke, then accidents Alzheimer’s, diabetes, etc. You’ll notice that most of these are diseases related to lifestyle issues and thus somewhat preventable. Perhaps Rep. King’s next press release will be, “America, shape up!”
But based on no other evidence than my dim view of Rep. King, the halo effect operates on my mind and I conclude that Rep. King would never do anything so sensible.