Substitute "black" for Muslim and this is the basis of a great deal of racist beliefs and policies in the US. The important question isn't who is in prison, and who is committing crimes, but why. Being Muslim (or Black) doesn't naturally incline someone to be a criminal. Something in the society at large is leading to either higher rates of conviction for the same crimes (the case in the US, harsher punishments for black offenders than whites for the same crimes), or an economic situation that leaves criminal activity as the only apparent or more economically beneficial choice for members of these groups.

And crime IS mostly an economic phenomenon, poor expected outcomes in life lead to high crime rates. But there is a link to high migration rates as well (if the economy can't absorb the new workforce quick enough, it leads to problems).

The problem is, the moral dilemma ceases to matter when a majority of the population (you can call them dumb, racist, whatever, but they're part of society) votes in someone to 'solve' the problem. There is a point where feelings and morality don't matter as much as practicality.

How do you know this? It might. I'd bet being Muslim inclines somebody to not be a criminal for some types of crimes, in fact, so I wouldn't categorically dismiss the idea that religion affects criminality.

Also as has been well-discussed here, crime rate differences are still present in non-economic crimes and your attempts to explain the situation fall flat. It's a story you're making up, badly, and to talk about this stuff with that kind of certainty is a bad look. The truth is, we don't know.

And based on an "it might" it's fine to just assign blame and pass judgement?

> I'd bet being Muslim inclines somebody to not be a criminal for some types of crimes, in fact, so I wouldn't categorically dismiss the idea that religion affects criminality.

In fact? By what facts?

What on Earth are you talking about?

> In fact? By what facts?

The fact there is regarding the question of what bet I'd make. "In fact" is a common figure of speech.

It's the same in the U.S. if you have a "Black" sounding name, you are less likely to be called in for an interview. I never understood why Black parents would give their children "ethnic" names knowing that it makes it harder in society. Even if their were only a 10% difference, why handicap your children?

And yes I'm Black.

To put it bluntly, a country doesn't get to colonize other other countries and then complain if people from those countries take the claims of civilizational superiority at face value and come to experience it for themselves. Colonization drastically and permanently altered the destiny of those countries, and unwillingness to accommodate people from those places displays a lack of responsibility.

The fact is, integrating immigrants IS an economic issue, there IS a limit, and if we fail, there WILL be backlash.

Anyhow, there's a plethora of studies that have been done on the economic impacts of migration, expected outcomes to immigrants measuring different factors (wages, employment, and subjective measures of assimilation), and so on. It's basically an entire field in itself.

What is the real 'limit'? The answer is when the negative societal effects become greater than the positive ones, and the host population decides to limit immigration.

The rest of your post was a moral argument, which again, doesn't matter when the population has decided they're at the 'limit'.

'a fairly closed culture' in this case being a racist framework that says they're not French enough and chooses to lean on archaic work rules and so on to enforce that barrier.

The quality of immigrants that US and Europe attract are vastly different. US attracts mostly high quality skilled labor (doctors, tech workers etc.) On the other hand, EU countries often attract the worst sort (people attracted to EU welfare, unsorted refugees, unskilled labor etc.) Naturally, the lower class folk are unlikelier to adjust to life in a new country, and so they commit more crime. This does NOT happen in the US. It is therefore unreasonable to compare US immigration to EU immigration.

Case in point: immigration from Pakistan. Pakistanis in the UK (as an example of a European country) tend to be poor and are highly represented in crime. Pakistanis in the US, on the other hand, have an average income $10000 HIGHER than the average US income. There is also no evidence to suggest they are involved in crime at a rate remotely comparable to the general population.

Unreasonable, but it doesn't matter when society and politicians use European problems to justify policies at home.

I can't find a non-paywalled link ATM (the ridiculous politicization of this issue has made it nearly impossible to get signal out of the noise), but I've seen studies that show that if you control for poverty, the link essentially disappears.

Can you guarantee that a large, rapid influx of immigrants won't lead to a poor underclass? Because that's as much of an issue as wherever they came from...

In no way is that a "large, rapid" influx. This whole issue is just political football and scare-mongering.

You're right, the US has a low rate of immigration and should be able to handle it, but that's not necessarily the case.

Also, 0.3% per year amounts to nearly 8% over one generation, not including differences in fertility between immigrant groups and born Americans.

And you're right about the 8%, but since only about 10% of immigrants to the US are Muslim, really we're talking about 0.8%, over something like 25 to 30 years. That is so completely disproportionate to the hysteria over immigration (literally the number one issue for Trump voters, IIRC) I can't help but conclude that it's a purposeful scare campaign.

Also, it's not often that any immigrant group is the boogeyman for more than a generation. It used to be the Irish, then the Polish, then the Puerto Ricans, and so on. A huge fuss is raised, and then they assimilate, at least in the US.