[queequeger]

Man, I work for a few hours and I have to play all kinds of catch up.

Ok, as far as I'm concerned, while questioning sources is always a good idea, I do believe that a larger percentage of immigrants are wanted for crimes for the same reason that large numbers of blacks are... because they're poor. If you look at the statistics of serious crime (and serious crime here implies 'felonies +'), the largest disparity of crime in the US (and I'm willing to bet the globe) is that between the rich and the poor. Reasons aside (for that would be a whole other discussion), the faster we get a group of people integrated into a society, the faster they stray from crime and poor lives.

Blind justice is not justice at all... I don't know who originally said it, just that Captain Picard said it in ST:TNG (<--nerd!). 'it's the law' is BS if the law is BS.

And as an adult I have lived in Iowa, northern Virginia, California, Texas and Georgia. Based entirely on anecdotal evidence, it would take multiple polls and studies done by the most reputable sociologists to convince me that the south isn't considerably more racist than the north, for I have seen it's disgusting, institutionalized racism more times than I can count, from afar and near.

The fact is, that if you read newspapers from 50, 100, 150 years ago and later, there was ALWAYS an uproar about some population coming to our country that was just trying to live in a nicer country. Irish, Italian, Chinese, every single one of these groups was routinely called 'a coming problem' and accused of trying to 'hijack america.' To this I say, grow up and give a little love.

And yes, the black community has not yet fully integrated, but that is ALSO another can of beans, and of particular interest to me. We can talk about that later!