In New Zealand we don't let people in unless they have learnt English and have either an education or skills to bring to the workforce. It doesn't mean they won't go around killing people.

Now I said that I wouldn't throw the thread offline anymore with my ramblings, but I'm a liar so I'll go on;)

I assumed he was talking about the risky behaviour that immigrants can often demonstrate when they move country, but now I see that he was referring to 'genetics' and in some aspects I'd agree with the 'risk gene' concept. But I guess some kind of scientific facts would need to back this up. But I don't doubt for one moment, that the USA is the most violent of all the developed countries.

This is actually a belief that some Europeans including myself share. In that the formation of the USA had quite violent beginnings. The early settlers and the frontier mentality, the war of independence, a civil war, the wild west and then participating in two world wars and two wars in Asia. Now a lot of countries in Europe have had similiar ocurrences down their history, but I don't think any can boast at having all these drastic conflicts in such a short historical time period! Also the USA is still actually quite a young country compared to the old world.

This is why I said it was one of the toughest countries to get into and it also helps to limit the amount of violent offenders that can enter from abroad.

See this is an example of what I mean when I say he is difficult to read. First he said "European immigrants during the settling period" then he said "meaning those who came during the 20th century." What does he mean? The "settling period" was not in the 20th century, unless he has a different defintion of "settling period."

I noticed this as well, as by the later part of the 19th century the USA was both the fastest growing and probably biggest economy in the world, meaning that the immigrants had long since settled in.

What about France? They've certainly been involved in a hell of a lot of drastic wars and violence in the past 200 years or so.

I believe the late 19th and early 20th centuries were when we had our highest levels of immigration.

Of all the European countries France has been involved in the most conflicts, but like Great Britain they were hugely experienced in statecraft and they're an old state fully used to conflicts, so its people dealt with the hardship as generation after generation had done so before and its people just got on with things. In relation to what is being discussed, the USA are basically a young country that has had to absorb a lot of conflicts in its short history and the results of this are open to debate, as to how this has affected American society over the last 100 years or so.

A couple quick comments about this:

• Modern France isn't an old country, it's younger than the United States.
• Like the modern British and French people, Americans are also descended from generation after generation of people who come from "states fully used to conflicts", many of them in fact from the two states you just named.

Whoops, I meant prior to the 20th century.

When isn't America at war?

Eh! It's one of the oldest countries in Europe! What you're thinking of is the French Republic, which was just an overhaul of the previous system and hierarchy, but France was still France. It's no different from when Russia became the Soviet Union back in the early 20th century, it was still essentially Russia but with just a load of extra states added on.

Yes, but these people that made up the USA came from a multitude of different cultures and backgrounds and then had to forge out a new life in a new environment. You cannot compare that to a European model, which already had a far more established socio/economic mainframe for its people. If you want to make a comparison then somewhere like Australia and even countries like Brazil or Argentina would make much better modern comparisons.