New Study: The Myth of Immigrant Criminality
It's a widely held belief, reinforced by those who advocate for stricter immigration controls, that increased immigration brings with it increased crime. It's by no means a new notion. All immigrant groups at one time or another have faced accusations of inherent criminality. Whether it's Italian mafiosos or Chinese opium dens, stereotypes and myths about immigrant criminality have permeated American culture and political discourse since the nation's inception.
So it is not surprising that many Americans today believe that the newest wave of immigrants bring with them a disrespect for the law and a proclivity for criminal behavior.
A new study, released last Monday, looked at immigrant criminality and found that not only are new immigrants less likely than their native-born counterparts to commit crimes or be incarcerated in state or federal prisons, they actually contributed to a decrease in the overall crime rate nationally.
The study, done by sociologists Ruben Rumbaut of the University of California, Irvine and Dr. Walter Ewing of the Immigration Policy Center, looked at three decades of census data to determine the incarceration rates of various ethnic and nationality groups to determine relative criminality. Its key finding: US-born men are five times more likely than foreign-born men to be imprisoned for criminal activity.
KEY FINDINGS:Crime Rates Have Declined as Immigration Has Increased
Immigrants Have Lower Incarceration Rates than Natives
Immigrants Have Lower Incarceration Rates than Natives among High-School Dropouts
The Paradox of Assimilation
The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men
This study follows a similar one released last June titled: "Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among First- and Second-Generation Young Men", done for the Migration policy Institute by Rumbaut and the University of California - Irvine. That study also looked at census and other data and came to a similar conclusion.
As with Rumbaut's earlier study, this newest one found that criminality increased with each successive generation. It details a "paradox of assimilation" where second- and third-generation immigrants have higher crime rates than those who first come to the United States.
The study concludes that the children and grandchildren of many immigrants become subject to the same economic and social forces, poverty and discrimination, that lead to higher rates of family disintegration, drug or alcohol addiction, and other behaviors that increase the likelihood of criminal behavior in native- born people of the same socio-economic class.
The report concludes: Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes and standard riminological theory tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration. The fact that many of these immigrants enter the country through unauthorized channels or overstay their visas often is framed as an assault against the “rule of law,” thereby reinforcing the impression that immigration and criminality are linked. This association has flourished in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where terrorism and undocumented immigration often are mentioned in the same breath.
But anecdotal impression cannot substitute for scientific evidence. In fact, data from the census and other sources show that for every ethnic group, without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated and the least acculturated. This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population. What is more, these patterns have been observed consistently over the last three decennial censuses, a period that spans the current era of mass immigration and mass imprisonment, and recall similar national-level findings reported by three major government commissions during the first three decades of the 20th century.
Given the cumulative weight of this evidence, immigration is arguably one of the reasons that crime rates have dropped in the United States over the past decade and a half. Indeed, a further implication of this evidence is that if immigrants suddenly disappeared and the country became immigrant-free (and illegal-immigrant free), crime rates would likely increase. The problem of crime and incarceration in the United States is not “caused” or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. But the misperception that the opposite is true persists among policymakers, the media, and the general public, thereby undermining the development of reasoned public responses to both crime and immigration.
The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men
Related:
Do Immigrants Make Us Safer? New York Times, Dec. 3, 2006
Immigration and crime: debunking another myth Migra Matters, Aug. 6, 2006
Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Dept of Justice May 2006
Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among First- and Second-Generation Young Men MPI, June, 2006
tags: immigration, studies , crime, Immigration Policy Center
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