[hoopd]

If the prison system is working at all we would expect to see violent crime drop as the prison population increases. There's a profit motive as well but we have to remember why societies build prisons in the first place.

Only 10% of California's prisoners have never been convicted of a violent crime. I doubt they all need to be locked up but I'm not seeing those prisons as being filled with peaceful drug dealers like the rumor has it.

I would guess in New Hampshire there isn't much of an immigrant population. I just looked it up and it's about 93% white there. My state's about 2/3's white, I live in a part of town where I don't walk around after dark because I might get jumped for being white which does affect my perspective. I have neighbors who immigrated from Mexico decades ago and still don't even speak basic english. I'm not saying my state should become all white or anything like that, but maybe we've reached a good mix and we could deal with the problems our hispanic and black communities already have because that's a challenge as it is. We're struggling to get them to stop killing each other, make it through high school and to read at a basic level. If we can't do that I don't know why we think we can take on even more people.

[sp332]

NH has immigrants but most of the immigrants have been white so far. My great-grandparents were born in Italy, and one of my great-aunts who was born here only spoke French until she was 14. There are still significant French-speaking groups in the southern part of the state. Lately my hometown has been taking in refugees from Bhutan. They don't speak much English but they are great neighbors and businesspeople. 3% of the population of the city are refugees who have settled since 2008, not counting other immigrants.

[hoopd]

I think if it's working that's great, I support a cultural plurality. It's like adopting kids - if you're doing well with the ones you have then have at it. If your kids are starving and can barely read, don't adopt more. In my state less than 7 of 10 of both our hispanic and black students are even graduating high school right now. We have too many districts with on-time graduation rates below 60% and those are the districts immigrants and refugees are most likely to flow into.

19% of high school graduates in the US are functionally illiterate[0]. Nationwide only half of black males are graduating at all. Half. We're already failing to take care of our poor. We're spending a very large amount of money trying to but it happens to be expensive.

If you go back to the start of this thread you'll see I've been consistent that there's a point where taking in more people is no longer a good thing. That doesn't mean I think it's always a bad thing, just that we should be honest that it can be.

[0] - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3...