Ah, where would we be without your quintessential dubious and concerning claims? Superb. We were all waiting.

Everyone is an immigrant from somewhere so.....I don't agree.

The same thing can be said about Canada but you don't see us shooting up schools and movie theatres and temples... the last major mass shooting here was almost 8 years ago and the one before that.... I don't even know. That's how rarely it happens here.

Ah how wonderful, you're here.

I don't see it as being a mere cultural stigma from immigration. There is an absolute rubbish mental health system in the states. I mean, Hell, I have good health insurance, and I can't even get anything but 25% of my mental health insurance covered. Along with that, there's in many states the requirement that the person be violent prior to said episode before mental institutionalization is even mentioned.

With that, there's only an average of 24 hours - 72 hours for your average stay, and it takes several weeks for many medications to even take effect.

I could go on and on about my personal experience, but I've never been violent, so my personal experience doesn't include much. Long story short, there's a lot of stuff wrong here; the ease of access to firearms coupled with the flawed mental health system don't really help much.

Good point, Attila the Hun and Napoleon Bonaparte immigrated all over the place exhibiting risky behaviour.

I think what HHBH is trying to imply, is that the USA is made up of immigrants from literally everywhere and most of those would've come from the lower levels of society from the country where they came from, hence violence and risky behaviour wasn't anything new to them.

I don't know what the news is like where you are concerning the shootings, but here in the UK we are quite amazed that there is an argument in the states, that one future answer to the shootings is that armed guards should now be posted as schools in an effort to deter future shootings.

I haven't read through too much of this thread, so I don't know if what I've put above is in entirely true and just another example of the UK press jumping on something. If true though, I find that solution disturbing.

Wouldn't that also be true of Canada though?

The best way to asses this, is to look at four English speaking countries that have been built up on immigration. These four would be the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Then looking at the ratio of gun ownership and how it relates to gun crime in each of the respective countries. I' sure there are stats out there for this. Then one of the most crucial factors is the type of immigration that each country attracts.

Initially both the USA and Australia took anybody before they really tightened up on their immigration criteria, whereas Canada and New Zealand have always been more restrictive on the type of immigrants that they let in.

I'm not sure if that's actually true or not, but assuming it is, so what? HHBH's point was that immigrants are by definition risk-takers so it shouldn't really matter what "type" were let in, all of them would still be risk-takers.

The point being, that if a country is more selective on the type of immigrants it takes (ie. those with an education and a profession) they're less likely to be involved in risky behaviour. HHBH has just lumped all immigrants together here and hasn't broken them down into immigrant categories.

But of course for that to be relevant, there has to be an argument that immigrants are directly connected to risky behaviour, in some cases they are but in other cases definitely not.

I don't think that's necessarily true of Canada... It's fairly easy to get in here and even to obtain citizenship. Hell, you can marry a Canadian abroad somewhere and get citizenship pretty much right away, I hear. The language proficiency tests that are taken just to get permanent resident status are a joke - there are people here who hardly speak a lick of English or French and they still pass the test. It's really easy to get visas here too - my boyfriend basically just flashed his passport and they did a quick check and processed the paperwork.

It's actually hard to emigrate there, a good friend of mine tried and gave up in the end and opted for Australia which he found easier. He stated that had he a job lined up or was on the list of required professions for Canada then it wouldn't have been such a problem. There is also a four year waiting list in most cases as well, unless you have a job lined up. The company employing you, then has to demonstrate that they couldn't find a Canadian resident to do the job as well. He found the whole experience totally negative and found opting for Aus a lot more straight-forward. The last time I looked, the queue through official channels to get into Canada was huge and a backlog of almost a million people!

There are ways around it of course, like study in Canada and then get a work permit on completion of your studies and then get residency that way, marry a Canadian or the business investment programme. For French speakers going to the French part of Canada is actually a lot easier as they are more lenient on requirements.

Visas are different and are easy to get as long as the basic criteria is met. Unless we're talking about the UK which has one of the strictest visa requirements in Europe.

Language proficiency tests are largely a joke, if immigrants were required to actually reach the required level, immigrant levels from non-English speaking countries would be right down.

The US is similar to that as well actually. I've known many people here with similar experiences to your friend's. Hell, they even gave my mother a hard time not too long ago even though she had been a citizen for forty-plus years.

I always thought the US was more like that, and not Canada.

Canada is probably the strictest to get into, as the USA has largely closed the door on immigration now and has more than enough people, unless it's unskilled labour from Latin America or offering people business ventures in Florida.

Maybe it depends on where you come from... Toronto alone has so many people from a variety of countries who have commented on the ease of immigrating here. More than half the population of this city were actually born outside Canada, mostly in India and China. The problem I think, is that we encourage educated professionals to immigrate here (doctors, lawyers, engineers) but then our laws require them to spend a crap load of money to go back to school to get certified to practice in whatever province they moved to... so they just end up with jobs like driving cabs and custodial work, if they come here at all.

You've proved the point I've been making, in that Canada tries to get educated immigrants even to do its more menial jobs. Meaning that educated professionals doing menial jobs in Canada, are less likely to demonstrate risky behaviour compared to their non-educated counterparts. Hence the criteria laid down by the authorities there regarding immigration.

That's also how the US is though so it doesn't prove your point at all. Also, I believe immigrants here are less likely than other citizens to commit crimes here, not more.

So you don't think that the majority of crimes are economically motivated?

Isn't economics a little broad to make a statement like that? Tell me which crime isn't the result of a need for self-preservation.

Er... what? How does that question have anything to do with what I just said?

Everything, the point I've been making is that restrictive immigration (fulfilling a criteria) leads to their better integration into the society that they're moving to. As new immigrants are usually at the bottom end of the economic ladder when they move, they are more prone to be involved in crimes than more established immigrants. Which is why I asked you, if you think most crimes are economically motivated or not.

I have no idea if most crimes are economically motived or not. I'd imagine some are and some aren't. The one this thread is about certainly wasn't.

But none of this has anything to do with immigration because, as I stated previously, immigrants to the US don't commit crimes at a higher rate than non-immigrants.

I certainly think most are. But the one in this thread wasn't.

If certain non-immigrants and certain immigrants are at the bottom end of the economic scale, then that is where most crimes will be committed from. As I believe most immigrants are more likely through no fault of their own, to be at this bottom end, the liklihood of them committing a crime is higher than somebody more established in society. But if you don't believe that crimes are economically motivated then we'll have to agree to disagree.

For the record, i'm actually a very strong advocate of immigration and believe people should always have freedom of movement to improve their lives and try and go wherever they want, but it does come with initial growing pains!

It's the same here. We have more criminals born and raised in Canada than ones who weren't. All the cold blooded serial killers and rapists that are in federal prison are Canadian. It's rare to hear about an immigrant committing even petty crimes.

HHBH is the worlds most successful troll, I swear to god.

Maybe that's because Canada has selective immigration and is quite difficult to get into legally. Why import more criminals when you have enough of your own!

Canada's current policy is actually a reaction to the looser immigration that was previously practiced by other countries. I once read an article about this exact issue and Canada a few years ago, sadly I've no idea what is was called.

Good grief, I feel like we're speaking two different languages here.

I never said I don't think crimes are economically motivated, I said I'm not sure if most are or not. Things like theft presumably are of course, but I don't really see what that has to with a conversation about homicide and gun control. So the real question becomes: Is murder an economically motivated crime? My answer to that is I don't know. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes economic status plays a role in an indirect way, but that's different from being the motivation for the crime.

Now as far as immigration goes, you can keep claiming that immigrants are more likely to commit crime but the data is on my side here. According to this article, for example, natural-born US citizens are five times more likely to end up in prison than immigrants.

The article is as you say initially, but on closer focus it actually tells a different story. Firstly, a percentage of the so called American citizens are actually going to be the children of immigrants, who possibly due to their less than brilliant social environment are going to be the perpetrators of crime (the article actually mentions this) so I didn't need to read between the lines here. Secondly, the article is referring to those immigrants that have moved to the USA through legal channels hence they are going to be law-abidding citizens (again the article states this) these factors can more or less be applied to most countries that take in large numbers of immigrants.

I was actually referring to those immigrants that have bypassed the checks and jumped the queue, these are the suspect immigrants who are just as capable of committing crimes as locals, which is why in a lot of countries background checks are actually much higher than they were.

I could talk to you about gun laws which focuses more on the thread in question, but the whole concept of guns in society is completely alien to us in the UK.

Why the **** are we talking about immigrants? Are we forgetting that most of these crazy massacres have been committed by privileged WHITE MEN??? Does that really gall you hhbh? I bet it bloody does.

These threads always go off in opposite directions and you're right we should be talking about the actual massacre. So I'll restrict my comments if any, to the actual subject at hand.

The vast majority of the population of the United States (read: mainstream America) is comprised of the descendants of immigrants, many of them only a generation or two removed, so your comments here don't really have much significance. You'll note that, far from the way you're painting it, the article states, "that the longer one is exposed to American culture, the more likely you are to participate in violence."

Look at the article again. The crime rates data that they cite doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. In other words, even when you include illegal immigrants in the mix, the crime rates are still lower than the natural-born population.

Well, you don't have people running across the border there either but you're still talking about immigration. :laughing:

This is what I'm saying.

I said I wouldn't talk about immigrants again on this thread (for a little while at least) so I'll come back a bit later on this one and nail your ass:p:

Okay, you may have to wait until the facts change though. That may take quite a while.

I just love how people will derail it from the fact that it's middle class (or upper class?) white dudes doing the killing. Can people not get over that? And the fact that they have to explain away OMG how could they do thizzz~~~~

It needs to fucking stop. The media attaches all these positive identifiers to people like Adam Lanza and James Holmes (so talented, super genius, phd candidate) but when POC get fucking MURDERED, they have all these negative adjectives attached to them. What the fuck?

I think the really crazy thing is that it takes something like Sandy Hook to get people taking about gun control and violent crime, even though these kinds of mass shootings are not at all representative of most violent crime in this country.

I bet HHBH is just killing himself laughing at what a totally irrelevant comment has done to the conversation.

How come when I make that point, no one says ****?