Immigration and Rhetoric

[NomDeGuerre]

I have been hearing a claim on various talk shows from anti-immigration forces that illegals kill 25 Americans a day. After some searching into this claim I found that the source comes from Rep. Steve King (R-IA):

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/ia05_king/col_20060505_bite.html...

The 25 is divided into 2 categories, 12 killed by murder and 13 by drunk drivers. How did Mr. King get this number? From this report by the General Accounting Office:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05337r.pdf

Nowhere in the report does it give numbers of drunk driving offenses by group or murder rates. The report does say that 27% of federal inmates are criminal aliens. Criminal aliens being defined as "Noncitizens who are residing in the United States legally or illegally and convicted of a crime".
Mr. King ignores this definition and treats the figure as if they are all illegal immigrants. So how did he get the number for the 25? He took the total number killed in the US by murder and drunk driving and assumed that 27% were committed by illegals.

Is is also safe to assume that 27% of other crimes are committed by illegals? If I were to say that 1/4 of all insider trading was perpetrated by this group I would be called an idiot. Figures never lie, but liars can sure figure.

[Moby]

You make a good logical argument but the GOP is not based on logic. They are based on hate, emotions and false statements. They want to control the Internet so that people can't check facts.

After all, knowledge is the worst enemy of propaganda.

[NomDeGuerre]

You make a good logical argument but the GOP is not based on logic. They are based on hate, emotions and false statements. They want to control the Internet so that people can't check facts.

After all, knowledge is the worst enemy of propaganda.

I know what you mean. There is no such thing as liberal or conservative statistics though. I keep seeing this statistic cited, and some reference the GAO as the source and nothing could be further from the truth. I think that Senator King should retract this from his website. Not from a partisan standpoint but from a blatantly dishonest use of statistics. I am not a statistician but I can't imagine one supporting this absurdly contrived method.