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Illegal Immigration: Separating Facts from Spin

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Brian B.
Illegal Immigration: Separating Facts from Spin

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We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.

Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.

The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 2 blocks west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east & 1 block north. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: FACT-CHECKING THE NEWS MEDIA NARRATIVES

This meetup will try to separate fact from fiction in the news coverage of the Central American migrant crisis & U.S. border enforcement policy, as well as the moral panics over an alleged crime epidemic, widespread voter fraud & welfare abuse committed by illegal immigrants.

While the skeptic community typically does a good job at debunking paranormal claims, blatant pseudoscience & wild conspiracy theories, there's been a bit of a deficiency in terms of teaching laypeople how to develop "news literacy" skills that deal with assessing mainstream media narratives. We need to develop a basic skill set that will allow us to consume the news critically and recognize emotional appeals, anecdotal evidence, poorly supported claims & false inferences -- and that's what this discussion will attempt to remedy, with the illegal immigration debate as our test case.

In preparation, it might be a good idea to review the 9 rules from Carl Sagan' s classic "Baloney Detection Kit":
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/

As you can see, in addition the video clips of news reports contesting various claims about illegal immigrants, I've also linked reports from various fact-checker agencies. These are good because they focus on verifying or debunking specific claims without a lot of extraneous material, but the quality of fact-checks varies and they still don't provide a comprehensive understanding of the issue.

In general, with complex political issues, we need to look past news articles & fact-checks to research by subject matter experts. And don't assume one research study can settle a complicated issue. Ideally, you want to find a meta-analysis or systematic review of all the research on a subject by a non-partisan body like the National Academy of Sciences. Failing that, look for a poll of the relevant subject matter experts. If you can't find anything to indicate that subject matter experts have converged on a high degree of consensus around an empirical question, you should try to remain relatively agnostic.

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DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over Central American refugees & illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles & watch all the videos prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about 41 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I figure we'll spend about each section.

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I. THE U.S. MIGRANT/REFUGEE CRISES OF 2014 & 2018 & COMPARING THE BORDER POLICIES OF OBAMA & TRUMP:

1a) Mehdi Hasan (Al-Jazeera), "Barack Obama: The deporter-in-chief - UpFront Reality Check" (video - 2:30 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CMjw-ibKtQ

1b) Jake Tapper (CNN) w/ Jeh Johnson, "Did Obama separate families at the border?" (video - 5:25 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arDp6ZCFRMY

1c) Laura Ingraham, "Separating parents from kids and fact from fiction" (video - 7:55 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5pdIywRuj4

II. MS-13 & THE ALLEGED "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CRIME WAVE":

2a) USA Today, "Why MS-13 is President Trump’s favorite villain" (video - 3:23 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDSRnfmPGN8

2b) Jake Tapper (CNN), "Fact checking Trump on crimes by undocumented immigrants" (video - 2:47 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoI6YX53i9s

2c) Tucker Carlson, "Why didn't we know truth about illegals and crime?" (video - 9:21 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdkkTLCUUQ

III. VOTER FRAUD & ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS:

3a) Jake Tapper (CNN), "Fact check: Trump on undocumented immigrants and voting" (video - 2:17 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VohVPeiV29k

3b) Fox Business w/ Doug Ose, "Easy for illegal immigrants to vote in California?" (video - 4:08 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT8mK

IV. WELFARE DEPENDENCY & ECONOMIC DRAIN FROM ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS:

4a) Simon Whistler, "What Would Happen if Illegal Immigrants were Removed from America" (video - 11:32 min, start at 5:36 & watch to 11:03)
https://youtu.be/3rjE2IzCrm0?t=336

4b) PBS Newshour w/ Robert Lynch & Robert Rector, "Economic Costs, Bonuses of Legalizing Undocumented Workers" (video - 8:45 min.)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GzeK5FrrAgI

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Cafe Walnut
703 Walnut Street · Philadelphia, PA
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