Immigration, a net Harm to the United States?

I support legal immigration; however, I oppose illegal immigration on principle. People shouldn't break the law to get into the US or anywhere else. Furthermore, the immigration laws should be enforced, or else they are pointless and should be repealed. This is one thing that I see as incoherent about the pro-illegal-immigration side: if you're in favor of these people entering the US, then shouldn't the solution be to make it legal for them to do so rather than to block attempts to enforce the current laws? If people don't like the law, then they should work to change it, not pretend that it doesn't exist. To try to make my point more clearly, it seems to me that, if a person supports illegal immigration, they should work to make it legal. However, the pro-illegal-immigration side's current approach seems to be to allow people to enter illegally and then either refuse to enforce immigration laws or retroactively give the illegal immigrants a legal status. If someone wants a high volume of immigrants, it would make more sense to expand legal immigration than to endorse illegal immigration. That's my rather jumbled two cents.

This is not the debates sections, is it?

I wouldn't consider myself pro illegal immigrant, it is indeed preferable to have people enter legally, I also am not for open borders, though I have not dug deep into that issue. Personally, I would be curious what policies would encourage illegals to come in legally, anyhow, I still think it's important to note that the incessant complaints about illegals committing crime on mass are wrong.  That is mainly why I put it in the opening post.

I made this a forum post because forums are usually more productive than debates when it comes to actually having your mind changed. Debating is probably more enjoyable however.

I see. That really helped me understand your position.

I think the big difference between us here is that by entering illegally, I consider illegals as having already committed a crime en masse. Now, I know what you meant, but I do not consider that crime any less criminal. 

I think it is also worth noting that the criminal activity rates among illegals is extremely difficult to measure, and based on a pretty big series of ever-changing assumptions and variables. The literature is really too speculative to be useful in deciding whether or not illegals commit more crimes than their legal counterparts or not. 

That said, I think the southern border is a useful loophole for cartels and human trafficking operations... there is solid evidence for that fact. It probably does not encompass the majority of the illegal populations, however. So in that sense, both sides are correct. 

This is indeed broadly true from what I've just looked up. But there are individual states like Texas that keep record of crime by immigration status. This is golden material for studying illegal immigrants, a study in 2018 stated that "Illegal immigrants made up about 6.4 percent of the Texas population in 2015 but only accounted for 5.9 percent of all homicide convictions."

Also, I would hope that bad studies would generally not sustain peer review.

Again, I'm not sure those records are detailed or broad enough to be useful. As for peer review... In areas as speculative as these, a "good study" is one that explicitly mentions its shortcomings and tells you to take their results with a fat pinch of salt. 

Okay, I personally have not seen any evidence to support the notion that the statewide databases are inaccurate, just that on a federal level issues can sprout up.

Notice I said "detailed or broad" enough to be "useful." They may be mostly accurate, but they're probably not useful for determining nationwide crime rates. The US is INSANELY diverse.

Again, my peer review comment pertains to studies, not data records. 

I am not personally aware of the nuances of the databases to determine whether or not their "detailed or broad enough to be useful." below is all I have seen relating to the  in-depthness or broadness of their records...

"The Texas DPS data separately show the number of convictions and arrests of illegal and legal immigrants for 44 and 46 different crimes, respectively, in the state of Texas by year from January 1, 2011, to November 15, 2017. This brief reports the conviction and arrest rates for each subpopulation of natives, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and all immigrants combined. This allows for a comparison of conviction and arrest rates between these sub-populations. This brief additionally displays conviction and arrest rates by select crimes."

As for your peer review comment, I will again appeal to my personal ignorance, I simply am not educated or informed enough to say that the peer review process is not proficient in weeding out bad studies in this area. 

In short, no matter the barriers that exist in determining the truth of the matter, I can only work off of the data available. Although, I was not aware that data was so scarce relating to illegal immigrants.

From my understanding, peer review does not get rid of faulty studies, it simply subjects them to scrutiny. And whether a study is good or bad will depend solely on who you ask. As much as researchers try to be objective in their findings, the areas of study that involve highly unknown variables allow for slight biases and errors to manipulate results more easily one way or the other. In response, a good researcher will meticulously research and concede the shortcomings of their study within the study itself, probably acknowledging somewhere to take the results with a grain of salt. Whereas, on the flip side, areas with greater knowledge show more consensus and higher certainty. Most climate papers, for example, show pretty high certainty in their results (not that they should, climate models have a long ways to go before they become anywhere near the accuracy needed to make accurate, long-term predictions).

I think the area we are speaking of would fall in the former category. Just my 2 cents, though

You were highly involved with research, correct? Is my statement above accurate? I could totally be off mark. 

You're right on peer review. Regarding whether a study is good or bad, you can say that a study is more likely to be good based on the degree of scrutiny applied, but that is not enough by itself to decide whether a study is good or bad. However, I don't see it as purely subjective. There's little absolute certainty, but there are gold standard techniques and ways to show that you've covered all or most of the techniques to demonstrate something. The problem largely stems from limiting the strategies used or pushing conclusions that poorly translate from the results generated. The bigger problem, however, is not interpretation; it's replicability. We can all find any number of possible errors in a study, but they need to be tested in order to determine that there are problems, and there are scant few who actually do that because there's very little incentive. Far too few studies are actually replicated, and that leads to a lot of contradictory data that takes a while to get sorted out. It's a frustratingly persistent problem across all fields.

Glad to see my understanding of it is somewhat accurate, thanks for the insight!

Thanks WhiteFlame!!