Friday 13 September 2024

"They’re Eating The Dogs"? "They’re Eating The Cats"?

 


"Despite scaremongering to the contrary, Haitian immigrants don't eat cats, and have much lower crime rates than native-born Americans. ... Other evidence shows they have a high rate of assimilation and income growth, which—despite mythology to the contrary —is actually true of recent immigrants, more generally. ...
    "There are some broader lessons to be learned from this sorry episode.
    "First, it's important to look at aggregate data, rather than just focusing on a few individual incidents, that may be unrepresentative, even if they happened. ...
    "Even if a group does have an unusually high crime rate, it will usually be wrong to discriminate against [individuals] based on racial or ethnic characteristics they have no control over. But at least in such cases we can plausibly argue there is a problem that might require a policy response. There is no such issue in the case of Haitians.
    "The cat-eating hysteria is even worse than the usual scenario of nativists holding an entire immigrant group responsible for the unrepresentative actions of a few members. Here, it appears the accusation was just totally false. But it is still an example of the more general problem of focusing on dramatic stories rather than more systematic data.
    "Second, it is a mistake to judge migrants by the state of their countries of origin ... 
Haiti is one of the poorest and most violent societies in the Western Hemisphere. But that's not because Haitians are, by nature, somehow inherently violent and lazy. Rather, it's because Haiti has terrible political institutions.
    "For a more detailed look at arguments that immigration causes institutional degradation, I recommend Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell's book, 'Wretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions.' I consider some of these issues myself in Chapter 6 of my own book, 'Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.'"
~ Ilya Somin, from his post 'Lessons of the Haitian Migrant Cat Scare'


4 comments:

Nigel said...

Some points to consider: Springfield, Ohio formerly had a population of around 58,000. It's now had an influx of 15 - 20,000 Haitian immigrants.
Haitian Voodoo Rituals are very real & still currently practiced.
From Wikipedia: "A central ritual involves practitioners drumming, singing, and dancing to encourage a lwa to possess one of their members and thus communicate with them. Offerings to the lwa, and to spirits of the dead, include fruit, liquor, and sacrificed animals."
Local Residents are reporting pets going missing & witnessing Ducks & Geese being caught & beheaded at local ponds.

Anonymous said...

Shut the fuck up moron.

MarkT said...

You been doing your own research Nigel?
https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=5142

Nigel said...

Two responses, both telling me to shut up in different ways. Neither one is disputing what I actually said.