Aside from the 25% percent figure being a value lacking evidentiary foundation and representing an intentional exaggeration for political purposes, i will certainly concede that in any large group of people there is a criminal element (i.e., a cohort of the people who have criminal records and/or may be prone to engage in criminal activity). Efforts by extremist politicians, however, to conflate the entire (or majority of the) population of Mexican & Central American migrants and refugees with the characterization that they are people who are "rapists", "animals", "bringing drugs", and "bringing crime" are quite intentional misrepresentations designed to sow the seeds of popular discord, divisiveness, bigotry, and HateDread.
As RastafarI we are more concerned with how these poverty-stricken and desperate brothers and sisters might be helped by us than with joining those voicing such mischaracterizations to foment HateDread of them. We need to admit that the heavy-handed, interventionist policies of our own government have created much of the violence and many of the failed institutions from which these people are fleeing, and take responsibility for our own national misdeeds -- not just south of the border, but in faraway lands such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria also.
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