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further reading online

When Robert Sampson argued that Open Doors Don’t Invite Criminals on the New York Times Op-Ed page, Sampson’s argument made waves. Alex Koppelman at Salon.com interviewed Sampson in response to Bill O’Reilly’s comments about criminality among immigrants, and Christopher Dickey with Newsweek cited Sampson’s research in response to Presidential candidates’ tendency to “get tough” on immigration to win votes.

Of course, all the responses weren’t so positive. Sampson received large amounts of hate mail in response to his Op-Ed piece as well. We asked Sampson to share some samples of this mail with us. Sampson warned us many of them were too crude to publish, but here are two of his favorites:

Dear Professor Sampson:

I met your article with not merely a chuckle, but guffaws - uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.

On what planet did you study sociology — Buck Rogers’ Mongo?

I have never read a collection of convoluted “statistics” and fabricated claptrap such as you espouse — not in my 65 years — that even BEGAN to approach the level of absurdity you puff. My golden era of fact and truth, unlike your Alice-in-Wonderland missive, included and includes being an author, writer, intensive research as an investigative reporter, and ongoing creation and maintenance of websites that bring instead of your style of puffery, TRUTH.

I don’t know from where you get your alleged facts, but I lived with your precious Mexican Americans in Phoenix Arizona and several other large cities. I regularly witnessed drunken brawls, defecation in public streets, destruction of public property, violent fights with knives, guns and machetes, assault on innocents, a level of burglary and theft never before seen (until Mexicans moved into the area), drunk-driving Mexicans who didn’t have an idea of how or where to obtain either a drivers license or insurance and didn’t care… And my son, a police sergeant, escorted so many Mexicans to jail that he wore out 60,000-mile-per-year tires three times a year!

Mexicans are “less violent” than Americans? Did you get that absurd distortion of truth from Viva Zapata or el Presidente Fox?

Six or eight decades ago, BEFORE criminal, indigent Mexicans began to fill our cities and towns, immigrants were studious, energetic, eager to assimilate and peaceful. They CONTRIBUTED to this nation. Today’s immigrants, however, especially Mexicans, are generally lazy, criminal, have no intention of assimilating (and do not assimilate), are uneducated beyond perhaps mid grade school, have no trade, and are here for what they can suck from the lifeblood of our country. They are a blight!

Your idiotic assertion that they are less violent than Americans or are in any way contributing to our nation because they live in Mexican ghettos is IDIOTIC!

You and your Ivy League-educated ilk live in a counterfeit utopian sphere of fantasy and lunacy. Your hot air would fill all of the balloons at the New Mexico balloon fest, leaving enough to launch the next space shuttle! No matter how often or how vehemently you blow, no matter how hard you try — you will never make your regurgitated gibberish so!

And most importantly, using a conduit like the New York Times DIMINISHES any credibility your imaginative article might have had. The New York Times has not a modicum of respect or credibility among real people who live in the real world, and has not had any since its editors embarked on an ongoing campaign of smear, hate, and imagination. Your silliness falls into the latter. But then, no CREDIBLE newspaper would HAVE your brand of madness.

The public would be better served if you printed handbills, on them reproduced your article, and distributed them to the Mexicans you so boldly embrace, suggesting that they use them to wipe their asses when they shit on our public streets! At least then SOME part of them might be clean.

And another example:

Dear Prof. Sampson:

I really hope you don’t teach this nonsense to your students. Your conclusions are irrational, unscientific and contrary to years of studies by the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., the former U.S. Customs Service, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service and a pantheon of other agencies with EXPERIENCE in the field of criminal justice.

Within the past week, a federal task force arrested about 400 key gangsters from the M-13 Salvadorian ethnic gang and related criminal organizations, which are acknowledged to be THE most violent criminal enterprises operating in the United States. All of them were illegal aliens.

Almost all drug traffic (other than methamphetamine) in the United States is now controlled by Mexican crime cartels which freely operate in the U.S. - Mexican border areas and which send illegal aliens across the border for a variety of anti-social purpose, including murder, robbery and distribution of narcotics.

Violent crime by illegal workers in New York, for example is on the rise. In the small county where I live, which has been one of the safest in the nation, almost all violent crime involves illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America, including a recent notorious rape, robbery, home invasion and murder of a white resident by an Guatemalan illegal immigrant. The defendant’s main claim to fame was that he was an accountant in his home country.

The decrease in crime in the United States is not everywhere. Los Angeles which has the highest population of Hispanic illegals has had increasing problems with gang violence and other violent crime—a rising, not declining crime rate. Similar problems are seen in Phoenix and Tucson and the liberal governor of Arizona has responded by putting national guard troops at the border. And Boston, your home metropolitan area, is not seeing a decrease in crime, but rather an alarming growth, with much of it attributed to illegal immigrants. I could give you a myriad of other examples as to why your “statistics” are inane or fabricated, but it is not worth my time, since I doubt you will change your mind.

What has helped to stem crime in the United States are better standards for policing, the employment of more law enforcement officers (these are what crushed the crime in NYC), stiffer sentencing of convicted criminals and the enactment by 36 states of laws that allow citizens to own and carry concealed weapons (with a permit). I can tell you from my personal experience that nothing gives a thug second thoughts about attacking a citizen the possibility that the citizen may be armed. Criminals are cowards and they prey on the weak not the strong. But then, isn’t that the history of the world?

I think you owe an apology to the public for fostering this op-ed piece upon them.