I agree that controlling for certain factors is a core principal in statistics so that you can tease out relationships once you quantify the impact of other fac

I agree that controlling for certain factors is a core principal in statistics so that you can tease out relationships once you quantify the impact of other factors. Also, "if done correctly" is a huge assumption with everyone having an agenda in the current climate. But what I was trying to get at is not that the argument should just be with that one uncontrolled data point. My issue is that society can't even agree on that basic, top level data point to arrive at the first-stage fact of whether immigrants do/don't commit more violent crime. Everyone would have to agree on that first, then they can dig into the "all else being equal" scenarios where you control for the other factors that influence crime.