The Relationship Between Immigration And Crime

Immigration is one of the central themes of the founding of the United States and as such it is often the epicenter of controversy among both citizens and policymakers. Throughout the twentieth century, American citizens and policymakers have brought to the forefront the importance of immigration and the role immigrants play within society. This can be a cause of friction between immigrants and multi-generational citizens because immigrants are often viewed with a negative connotation. They are often blamed for stealing jobs from hardworking citizens, draining the healthcare system and adding to the homeless population. They are associated with crime, poverty and in general they are perceived as undesirable members of society (Spenkuch, 2014). The relationship between crime and immigrants is of particular importance because there is a common perception that immigrants cause crime and their neighborhoods are riddled with criminal activity. Also important to note is that the characteristics of immigrants tend to coincide with members of the native-born population that are disproportionally incarceration. In general, they are poorly educated, earn low wages and are young, males. This led to the perception that incoming immigrants continuously add to the lower class, criminal population. In order to clearly understand the relationship between the two concepts they must be examined both from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint

A couple of facts that counters the image of illegal immigrants as criminals include, “The anti-immigrant forces draw, for example, on the ‘2006 (first quarter) INS [immigration and Naturalization service/FBI statistical report on undocumented Immigrants’ with its array of alarming statistics about illegal immigrants and crime to make their case that undocumented immigrants not only break the law entering the country but also break the laws, with a proclivity to violent crimes, once they make their homes here.” And, “One of the most disturbing findings of the IPC study was that immigrant children and immigrants with many years in the country are more likely to become criminals than first-generation immigrants or those with less than 15

The author focuses on Hispanic/Latino immigrants and the views on immigrants who commit crime. In this study, the author’s findings come from the public perceptions. The perceptions of the public in local communities, towns, and cities, discriminate due to the increase in Hispanic/Latino immigration. The public’s view in the study were discriminative against Hispanics/Latinos who migrated to the United States. Sohoni found that societies perceptions in surveys propose a great quantity of Americans that consider immigration will indicate abnormal criminality. On the contrary, the author found that immigrant Hispanic/Latino youths were less likely than Hispanic U.S. Americans to participate in crime.

There are illegal immigrants who happen to be Mexican, like Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, but these criminals are not the majority of the immigrants. In fact, the American Immigration Council claims there is a correlation between larger immigration populations and lower violent crime: “Between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent and the number of unauthorized immigrants more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. During the same period, FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48 percent”. The article, titled “The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States”, goes onto explain that immigrants are actually less likely to engage in criminal activities or end up in jail. If supporters of the wall actually want to protect themselves from crime, a better idea might be to build a wall around their own home and never leaving instead of building a 2,000 mile wall based on inaccurate

What role will immigrants have in the future of American crime? Unlike the past and the present, it is difficult to determine exactly what sort of role immigrants will play in the future. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2010) “The next half century marks key points in continuing trends — the U.S. will become a plurality nation, where the non-Hispanic white population remains the largest single group, but no group is in the majority” (p. 11). Estolano LeSar Perez, a researcher with Los Angeles 2050, says this could have a real impact on something that preoccupies many Americans: crime.

According to Malia Zimmerman of Fox News, after an extensive study on crime rates and illegal immigrants, it was found that the 11.7 million illegal immigrants living in the US account for a total of 13.6% of all crime committed (Zimmerman). 13.6% may seem to be a small amount of crime, but it is not small when only 11.6 million of America’s 318.9 million person population are committing it. Additionally, approximately 12% of murder cases and 20% of kidnapping cases are committed by Illegal immigrants (Zimmerman). Another example of crime with illegal immigrants is in 2014 when the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) released 30,558 criminals back onto US streets. That group of 30,558 people had a total combined 79,059 criminal convictions, including 186 kidnappings and 86 homicides

Although events such as San Bernardino in 2015 provide anecdotal evidence of immigrants committing acts of extreme violence, these events are extremely rare. Nonetheless, tragedies such as these inevitably grab headlines and capture the attention of millions of Americans across the country. Tragedies such as the attack in San Bernardino hold strong emotional appeal to proponents for restrictive immigration policy. However, these rare and uncontrollable events should not provide the base of logic for America’s national immigration policy as they are not a proxy for immigrant behavior as a whole. Various statistics regarding crime among immigrants may reveal an underlying reason for lower crime rates, which is that the majority of immigrants understand the implications of committing a crime and know that it would not be in their best interest as a new member of the country they wish to call home. Natives, moreover, have crime rates five times that of immigrants. This demonstrates the potential positive externalities that immigrants contribute to the social sphere by lowering the crime rate and acting as models within urban America.

Secondly, illegal immigrants fill up prisons and bring crime to America. One reason is that that Mexicans are the second most popular race in American prisons. “While illegal immigrants account for about 3.5 percent of the U.S population, they represented 36.7 percent of federal sentences in FY 2014 following criminal convictions, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data obtained by Breitbart News” (May). A lot of the illegal immigrants fill up us prisons also committing crimes endangering others. Another reason, is that Illegal immigrants take up a low percent of the USA’s population but in prisons they take up a huge percent of inmates.”Of the "illegal" residents, 20,333 — 74 percent of them — were primarily sentenced for immigration violations, not violent crimes, according to the chart. Nine unauthorized immigrants were primarily convicted of murder, 50 of assault, 19 of sexual abuse, the chart shows” (Selby). A lot get charged with violent crimes, affecting the lives of completely innocent americans. Also, illegal immigrants are hard to catch. “Tracking down dangerous criminals often meets with far less success. A 1998 Washington Post article revealed that District of Columbia police had been unable to resolve two dozen homicide cases because the suspects had fled to their native El Salvador to avoid prosecution. These cases represented nearly two-thirds of the department 's 37 outstanding warrants for slaying suspects. A recent book

It is proven that immigrants are far more afraid and less likely to as well participate in any crime involved activities, quit their jobs, shoplift, hurt others in any way, shape or form, or do something that could get them arrested. It’s the sense of fear they have for getting deported, but it may also be that good spirit in which they truly came here to start a better life with no problems. Many comparisons between cities, communities and counties are done by economists to differentiate the links of local concentration of immigrants and the rates of crime and violence in that specified area. Results showed that the higher number concentration of immigrants, the lower crime rate. There is no proven connection found between immigrants and higher crime

A quarter of the inmates in federal prisons are aliens. In a study comparing high immigration cities to low immigration cities, the high immigration cities were found to have twice as much violent crime as low immigration cities. Not only does immigration contribute to the poverty that causes crime, but also many aliens have criminal careers.

Depending on several contents of the directed research project, I was definitely aware that no one should be looked down regardless of legality and race. Therefore, the best thing is to understand the reasons why the immigrants are here in the first place or the circumstances they are in. For example, better life for their families, and finding a considerable job being the most common. It is obvious in the United States that, the public is quick to blame illegal immigrants, and assuming they are the main cause of crime and they are concerned that parts of the U.S is becoming damaged with drug trafficking and violence.

The subject which has been chosen for the upcoming paper will be on illegal immigration and the effects that those individuals that are classified as illegal immigrants on crime rates within the territories of the United States in comparison to that of legal citizens crime rates in the United States. The first order of business will be the determination of how many samples will be taken and used in the hopes of getting an accurate cross section of a target populace (Sandelowski, 2000). It is the best estimation that since the nature of the up coming paper will primarily deal with the collection of data that already in exists particularly from state and federal organizations such as the FBI's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the like then

Tuba Bircan and Marc Hooghe stated in their article “Immigration, diversity and crime: an analysis of Belgian national crime statistics, 2001-6”, that the idea that crime and immigration is linked is not new. It was being studied in the 18th and 19th century through the Chicago School of social ecology being its main influence. Social Disorganization Theory helps explain the link between crime and the structure of the community. But Bircan and Hooghe state in their article that once you start adding other factors in, like deprivation, unemployment, that there really is not a link between immigrants and crime. Bircan and Hooghe found new evidence from Belgian, and investigated whether immigrants that are in concentrated zones have a high impact

Research on social capital and immigration contends that immigration is inversely related to crime since immigrants often move in enclaves or groups to new areas and they create social and cultural enclaves that help individuals cope with changes at the economic and political level. Zhou and Bankston studied the integration of Vietnamese immigrants in New Orleans and found out that most Vietnamese young adults lived in very sheltered neighborhoods and family networks and they were shielded from crime (4). Thus, ethnic social relations end up playing a very critical role in the integration of foreigners without the need for them to engage in crime as a way of coping with social challenges. In ethnic enclaves it is difficult to observe anomie

The thought of arriving immigrants in any host country has been accompanied by reactions of exclusion, and continues to expand throughout the years. During any social illness, immigrants tend to be the first to be held responsible by their recipient societies. Most crimes are associated with immigrants due to the fact that they may not posses the same socio-economics status as natives. Another contributing factor is the media that conducts numerous stories that highlight the image of immigrant crimes to recall the alleged difference between native and foreign born. Undoubtedly, the correlation between immigration and crime has become one of the most controversial discussions in current society. As we enter a new era, immigrants will have