Biweekly Discussion - Is Mass Migration a Crisis or a Moral Panic?

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Here's the link to the event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88963595882?pwd=THVNWGhwcWUxVW1Gb0RvSkJiZ2x3UT09

Meeting ID: 889 6359 5882
Passcode: 580060

IS MASS MIGRATION A CRISIS OR A MORAL PANIC?

FACT-CHECKING THE NEWS MEDIA NARRATIVES ABOUT "ILLEGAL/UNDOCUMENTED" IMMIGRATION

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 demographic change, an alleged crime epidemic, widespread voter fraud, and 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, the major ones have a left-leaning bias, 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.

RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:

This is a revised version of a discussion we had back in 2018. The biggest difference is the 1st section - in the past, we compared Obama & Trump's border policies and whether the media focused more on the issue of deportations & refugee detention centers under Trump and ignored Obama's role as "deporter-in-chief". A lot of the arguments revolved around the issue of family separation in detention center and when this started. (We could've done a similar comparison to the ways the Trump & Biden administrations handled the southern border crisis, with Vice-President Kamala Harris telling Guatemalan migrants "Don't come" in June 2021 and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reiterating this to Cuban & Haitian refugees in July, but I felt that would be focusing more on political point-scoring rather than conspiracy theories & moral panic.)
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/250590230/

FYI: I also covered this topic for the Philadelphia Thinking Society back in Oct. 2018 -
https://www.meetup.com/thinkingsociety/events/254973933/

Back in August 2018 we had a meetup entitled "Europe's Debates over Migrant Crime & Terrorism" where we discussed: (1) migrant crime rates and the alleged "rape crisis" in Europe, (2) the Rotherham scandal and "grooming gangs" in the UK, (3) allegations of "no-go zones" and de-facto Sharia law in European cities, and (4) the migrant crisis as a "terrorist Trojan horse" and the dangers from returning ISIS fighters.
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/251759967/

This meetup will be followed by a related meetup hosted by the Philly Political Agnostics that will explore the moral psychology behind why people view immigration differently, the ethics of different immigration policies, and the economic & social effects of high levels of immigration:
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/mxpscsyccpblc/