Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/History of Hispanic immigration to the United States

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was  delete. Consensus is that the current article is too full of inaccuracies and bias for it to be cleaned up without starting anew. I'll leave it to editorial discretion whether this topic ought to be recreated at some point in the future, or if it would be better to expand and improve on related articles. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:21, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

History of Hispanic immigration to the United States[edit]

History of Hispanic immigration to the United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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This article is essentially a POV fork of the existing articles on US immigration history. Category:Immigration to the United States. It is based in large part on two sources: a polemic pamphlet[1] published by a partisan group, Federation for American Immigration Reform, and a slim book classified as "Juvenile Nonfiction" by Google Books.[2] Considering the extensive set of neutral articles we already have, this POV article is out of place. A fresh article could be written on this topic, but this article is better just deleted. Note that it was immediately "PRODed" but that the single-purpose editor removed it.   Will Beback  talk  22:04, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - In my opinion, everything from the subhead "Illegal Immigration" to the end of the article is a content fork for Illegal immigration to the United States and — if this article is kept — should be blanked on those grounds. The top section is bad and in need of a ground-up rewrite. Carrite (talk) 17:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but improve -- This is a legitimate topic, concerned with a significant American ethnicity. It is potentially an importnat sub-article to US Immigration history. If it suffers from POV issues, the appropriate cource of action is to tag it for improvement; for NPOV; and better sourcing, rather than to delete it. Only if there are copy-vio issues should it be deleted. Being the other side of the Pond, I do not propose to intervene myslef. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep, needs a lot of improvement The article is very POV, which it achieves by quoting from POV sources, to prove (for example) an association between immigrants and crime. Also tends to lose track of its subject, talking as if "Hispanic immigrants" and "illegal immigrants" are synonymous. I almost hate to keep it in its present form, it is so biased, but certainly the subject is notable and worthy of an article. Maybe we could invite some more neutral parties to come and work on it. --MelanieN (talk) 23:51, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changing my opinion to Delete unless someone strips out the POV/non-RS stuff and leaves a smaller, more balanced, more factual and source-based article. AfD is not for improving articles, but I just don't think this article can remain here in the shape it's in. --MelanieN (talk) 13:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete its crap this needs a fundamental rewrite, nothing to salvage here. Weaponbb7 (talk) 01:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and start fresh. The article is so fundamentally flawed and inaccurate in its first few paragraphs that its really quite remarkable. There were Hispanic immigrants (immigrants from Spain and Portugal) in the Thirteen Colonies, and migration between the Americas has continued since then. Nevertheless, the article as it stands proposes that the "first" Hispanic immigrants came after the Mexican American War. bd2412 T 02:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
Agree, the article is so POV that is has a lot of its facts wrong. It should, for example, be noted that after the Mexican-American War, the Mexicans were not immigrants; the Americans were. Until the mid-nineteenth century, it would be more accurate to talk about Anglo immigrants into Texas and California, rather than Hispanic immigrants into the southeastern United States. They were there first, it was their country. I keep in mind that when my son's class of California high school students was touring England, a Brit asked teasingly "Are you chaps from the colonies?" and my son replied "We are from the SPANISH colonies." --MelanieN (talk) 03:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but Improve - Is this a legitimate topic for an encyclopedia? Yes, obviously. Does this topic meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines? Yes, obviously. Is this article POV-laden and thus out of bounds on those grounds? Perhaps. There does seem to be an EFFORT made towards providing balance although this strikes me as more a POV essay on "The Hispanic Problem in America Today" rather than a legitimate coverage of the claimed topic. But this is one of those hot-button current issues where there's not going to be a decent job done due to endless waves of vandals and cranks that come rolling in to score political points... I am specifically concerned that the most-cited source in the article is clearly a right wing talking points document. A bloated, bad article about a big, important topic. Carrite (talk) 14:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to change my vote to Delete and Rewrite from scratch. I will further volunteer to help with the rewrite next week, if there are a couple others willing to do that. I'll write on early 20th Century hispanic immigration. The entire discussion of current immigration problems needs to be stricken and the article limited by date to dodge the current events aspect of this. Carrite (talk) 14:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"History of Hispanic Immigration to America Up to World War II 1960," or some such would keep 3/4 of the IP idiots off the subject. Of course, they'd still need a current events page to vandalize... Carrite (talk) 14:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Let me know the name of your new article and I'll try to help. I suggest you check first to see if there is an existing article that covers the subject or can be expanded to cover it. --MelanieN (talk) 16:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was scouting today. I didn't spot anything that could be expanded and it looks like the WikiProject Latino group is down for the count. I really don't want to get into writing 19th Century immigration history though, so somebody needs to come riding in on a white horse to take that on. I could do a creditable job for the 1900-1930s period, which is the time frame I work with most. Cutting the article with the post-Cuban Revolution immigration wave would allow the proper History of Hispanic Immigration to be told without getting hit by flying feces from angry chimps... But the chimps are still gonna want to have a poop gallery, which gets us exactly back to the field plowed by the terrible article we are discussing in this AfD. Carrite (talk) 17:20, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW I wonder if "Hispanic immigration" is really a subject that makes any sense? There are so many different groups described as Hispanic - Europeans from Spain and Portugal, Mexicans, South Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc. They all had very different routes here and very different experiences upon arriving. I'm not sure lumping them into a single article really makes sense. --MelanieN (talk) 06:13, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete-- I agree with the nominator, we have several articles covering the subjects of illegal immigration and the history of Latinos in the US (that goes back several years before the Mexican War). The current article is just an attempt to use Wikipedia to promote the current talking points from the anti-immigration establishment. --Jmundo (talk) 19:11, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete-- The article is misleading and anything but the "History of Hispanic immigration to the United States" as the title states and more of an anti-immigration and anti-Hispanic propaganda piece. A balanced article would contain the positive contributions which Hispanic immigrants have made to the United States as well as the negative. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia where we share our knowledge, not the lack of it. For example, with a little research the author would have realized that Puerto Rico has been an American territory since Oct 1898 and that Puerto Ricans are not "immigrants", they are all American citizens and have been since the approval of the Jones Act of 1917, in which the U.S. imposed said citizenship on them (They didn't ask for it). To state that Puerto Ricans are immigrants and to include them as such in this article would be the same as to include those Hispanics (Mexican-Americans, etc.) who are naturally born American citizens in this article. Tony the Marine (talk) 21:07, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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