Immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans

Great Debates
1

It’s easy for the pro- and anti-immigration camps to sling anecdotes at each other of the criminal behavior, or lack thereof, of immigrants to the U.S. - but anecdote-slinging accomplishes little in the way of either side demonstrating empirically whether, and if so, how the U.S. should modify its stance toward immigration.

Sadly, however, the immigration debate has been characterized by anecdote-slinging of all sorts, and very little in the way of statistically sound data. Until today, in spite of periodic searching, I’d never seen a statistical study of the level of criminal behavior of immigrants vs. similarly situated native-born Americans. But I just ran across this study, which reaches some conclusions that surprised me:

[ul]
[li]Among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was 5 times higher than the 0.7 percent incarceration rate of the foreign-born.[/li][li]Foreign-born Mexicans had an incarceration rate of only 0.7 percent in 2000—more than 8 times lower than the 5.9 percent rate of native-born males of Mexican descent. Foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men had an incarceration rate of 0.5 percent, compared to 3.0 percent of native-born males of Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent.[/li][/ul]

But perhaps most surprisingly (to me, anyway - I’d never really thought about assimilation in these terms):

[ul]
[li]The children and grandchildren of many immigrants—as well as many immigrants themselves the longer they live in the United States—become subject to economic and social forces, such as higher rates of family disintegration and drug and alcohol addiction, that increase the likelihood of criminal behavior among other natives;[/li]
and

[li]The risk of incarceration is higher not only for the children of immigrants, but for immigrants themselves the longer they have resided in the United States. However, even immigrants who had resided in the United States for 16+ years were far less likely to be incarcerated than their native-born counterparts.[/li][/ul]

The study does not appear to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. Are you surprised by its conclusions? Why or why not? Do you take issue with the methodology used in the study? And does reading it change your perspective on immigration? Please discuss.

(You can find the complete study here.)

2

Personally, I’m not sure it’s relevant. It’s a numbers issue not a crime issue. For example, blacks commit a disproportionately greater number of crimes than whites do (based on their population). Perhaps Mexican immigrants do not commit crimes in the same proportion. Does this mean we should import more Mexican immigrants or is it an utterly irrelvant statistic in the larger immigration debate? I go for the latter.

My concern with immigration is twofold: How many are too many and generational assimilation will only work when there are peaks and valleys in immigration. That is, a moratorium on immigration when appropriate.

The crime statistics aren’t important to me.

3

Yes, and ramp of exports of black citizens. :smiley:
Regardless of the actual stats, it’s being sold in large part as a crime issue.

4

Certainly, it was proposed as a crime issue in this thread from two months ago.

5

I see your point but that is not, however, what the OP asked. Now I haven’t looked at the study so I know nothing about it’s methodology but again, in my mind, it doesn’t matter. In past contributions to these sorts of discussions I don’t believe I have ever mentioned crime (though feel free to correct me).

Put another way, most immigrants are decent, law abiding people. Indeed, most human beings are decent, law abiding people. Most of us are not criminals. That said, that does not mean there aren’t limits to immigration. There are genuine concerns that America could be balkanized by a large influx on non-English speaking immigrants who do not assimilate. I believe there is a legitimate concern that without a reduction in immigration there won’t be generational assimilation. I think it is reasonable to question the motives of the ruling elite in Mexico who seem content with pushing their poorest north of the border allowing them to ignore the endemic corruption and poverty in that particular country.

Lastly, there are sincere economic questions about the viability and true benefit to such a large pool of unskilled labour. The crime aspect hardly seems relevant to me.

6

Are iilegal immigrants who commit a crime on US soil incarcerated here? Or are they deported? By which I don’t mean “according to law”, since I can imagine that rather than going through a trial, it’s easier and cheaper to simply deport the person for the majority of cases, so rather in real life, what generally happens and in what proportion?

7

I’d like to know how many people are being tossed over the border instead of incarcerated.

While I realize we’re back in anecdote-land, a friend of mine went to repeat 12th grade to the US. Got Utah (a place about which all he knew was how to find it in a map). The car he was in was stopped by a cop and the over-21 guy riding gunshot had an open beer. They all got home detention, but my friend got to do it “back home”.

8

Not surprised in the least, it’s the same over here. Despite the efforts of the National Police Agency to terrify people with warnings of the foreign criminal invasion, their own numbers say just the opposite. The largest group of foreigners, Koreans, have a crime rate one-tenth that of Japanese citizens.

9

I would expect that those who tend to get incarcerated for crime tend to come from the lower socio-economic groups.

Legal and talented immigrants don’t quite fit in that category, and it seems very likely that illegal and untalented immigrants tend to commit crimes for which they are unlikely to get caught. They also have the opportunity to skip the country, are highly mobile and are unlikely to grass each other up.

In the UK one can categorize crimes by original nationality, for example someone caught pickpocketing in London will be from …, someone rigging spyware on an ATM will be from …, someone committing multiple identity social security fraud will be from … or …

I would expect a slave brothel keeper to be from …, and a key heroin contact to be from …

10

I’m a law-abiding citizen in general, but I know that in the US I was terrified of the cops; in Spain I’m merely scared.

Spanish nacionales are about as nice as an omelette of rusty nails, but at least I’m somewhat familiar with the legal system and I know several lawyers who would be able to recommend a colleage if they don’t practice whatever branch of the law I needed. The Civiles have a reputation of being polite “even to crooks”. A forceful kind of polite, if needed, but polite. If I went to jail in Spain, I would not get any kind of sweet ride (too “high class” for the taste of most of the ladies there, I better try and get me a teaching job or something like that fast), but I wouldn’t lose my house.

There’s a lot of things about the US legal system that I don’t understand. A lot of anecdotes, some happening to myself, some to close friends and relatives, some overheard of reported, of nasty behavior (a European cop just doesn’t invade your personal space the way US cops do). The use of immigration and cops as a threat by the low-end employers/supervisors seems to be common in the US; in many other countries, it’s unheard of (doesn’t mean it never happens, only that I’ve never heard of it in other countries where I know immigrants). You know (mistakenly or not) that if you so much as look ugly at a cop/border guard you can be kicked out of the country (even if you’re “legal”); you can be sent to jail for years before having a trial; you can be kept in a room without food, water or access to a toilet for a couple of days… maybe I’m a wuss, but I find all that pretty scary. You know that if you’ve immigrated legally as a spouse and your spouse dies, you’ll be kicked out without enough time to sell the house (and you didn’t even commit a crime!). You have tons of incentive to stay on the pretty side of the law as much as possible, when it can mean losing everything you’ve worked for.

Low-end in this case meaning “stuff that floats and ain’t cream”, not the ones who are low in the organigram.

11

If the study does in fact refer to incarceration rates for foreign-born legal immigrants, the stats are hardly surprising. Legal immigration to the US is an arduous process involving extensive filtering and screening, so the legal immigrant population is highly motivated and on average better educated and more socially adaptive than the native-born population. Screening for past legal problems will also heavily filter the immigrant population for ‘anti-social behavioral traits’. When we get to the second generation things get a little fuzzy - the rules were different 20 or 30 years ago, are we referring only to those whose parents were both foreign born ? Both legal immigrants ? etc

If the study also refers to illegal immigrants, where are the population numbers coming from ?

Regarding the last point - ‘The risk of incarceration is higher not only for the children of immigrants, but for immigrants themselves the longer they have resided in the United States.’ Could be a somewhat misleading truism, simply reflecting that the longer you commit crimes, the more likely you are to get caught.

The article cites the example of Chinese / Taiwanese men with a foreign-born incarceration rate which is 3 times lower than the Chinese / Taiwanese native-born rate. Are these two populations comparable ? Have the foreign-born only been in the US a short time, and not yet run into trouble ? Were the foreign born subject to stricter immigration requirements ? Did the foreign born arrive in family groupings and the native born arrive as single men ? Were the foreign-born already prosperous when they arrived ?

I would also question whether ‘incarceration rate’ is a true measure of criminality (as per Sage Rat), and why the study focusses on men aged 18-39, would different ages show different results ?

Ultimately I have to agree with Lochdale - assuming incarceration is an anomaly, I don’t see how it’s relevant to the immigration debate.

12

The native born arrived as single babies, Themenin. Native-born in this context means “American citizens by birth”.

13

I would imagine that this is largely just a matter that there’s more crime in the US, so the police and people are more on-guard and on-point all the time. Just guessing though.

14

Oh, so the fed armoires whose chests were almost touching the door of an old lady’s house when they went there as part of a background check were afraid? The git whose spit flew in my face when he got closer to me to yell at me for pointing out that I’d already been screened twice in the same line? The other git who called two other rent-a-cops to grab me before accusing me of falsifying my passport because my kind of Visa didn’t appear in her list? The traffic cop who pulled me and a coworker over and who got within “if Joe breathes too hard, their chests will touch” distance? (Being a black man driving an expensive-looking car, often in the company of women who were considered white by comparison with him, Joe got stopped quite often) The traffic cop who made me spread 'em because he didn’t like that I was driving on a foreign license?

Dunnow, I find the theory that “they wanna be John Wayne and don’t even know who John Wayne was” more believable. And it’s still scary and nasty.

15

They are incarcerated here. If the Feds are doing what they are supposed to, they undergo a deportation hearing while still serving their sentences. Then, if they are ordered deported (there are certain very narrow discretionary waivers from deportation available for longtime permanent residents), they are sent back after the criminal sentence is served. I’ve never heard of a case in which a person was simply removed from the U.S. in order to avoid the trouble and expense of conducting a trial.

16

oops - of course I was referring to the parents of the native-born. I guess my point was that there have been different immigration contexts and populations at different times, and that legal immigration to the US is currently skewed towards skilled / educated / prosperous. Overall there seems to be a lot of apples to oranges in the cited article, as well as ambiguous definitions.

Getting kind of off-topic, but I have to agree with Nava that routine contact between citizens and police in the US does seem to take on a life-or-death flavor way more often than in many other countries. The flavor is similar to countries where there’s some level of civil war going on. It seems like for better and for worse the social contract in the US is kind of shaky on both sides of the aisle.

17

The U.S. Census Bureau for the most part, which reports statitstics on everyone residing in the U.S., and takes great pains to calculate both the number of people here legally and the number of people here regardless of legal status. Everyone physically present in the U.S. is counted. Read the study, and it’ll be much clearer.

The foreign-born would be anyone not born in the U.S., whether they arrived as infants or as 50-year-olds. The length of time in the U.S. is all over the map - there are some more charts in the full article.

Because immigration restrictionists are raising immigration-related crime as an issue on a regular basis.

Did the native-born “arrive as single men”? They didn’t “arrive” anywhere - they were already here to begin with.

18

Eva Luna, you’re right, I just skimmed the article, now I’ve skimmed it a little closer !

Overall the report is comparing different generations and subsets of immigration, and implying that the only substantial variables impacting on incarceration rates are national/ethnic origin and the duration of US residence (years or generation). The report also seems to be arguing that exposure to the US is the cause of increased incarceration rates in immigrant populations. This may be true, but I would argue that there are other substantial variables that need to be addressed - immigrants are a selected (and self-selected) population, with different groupings of characteristics depending on ‘vintage’ as well as origin.

So yes, I mistyped regarding the populations of the ‘native born’, when referring in fact to the foreign-born parents of the ‘native born’. But it’s safe to assume that the characteristics of the ‘parent population’ will impact on the life outcomes of their offspring.

In short, care needs to be taken when comparing disparate populations !
Other than that, interesting report, and it’s always encouraging to see dangerous myths challenged by research.

I have to say though, that the thing that always makes my jaw drop when looking at this kind of data is how staggeringly high the US incarceration rate is. I saw a couple of population segments in the tables where it was close to 1 in 5. The cost, both social and economic, must be devastating.

19

Eva Luna, hope you don’t mind if I interject an unrelated bit of immigration news that rebuts assertions often made here.

LA Times is reporting that Colorado farmers are planning to use inmates to fill the labor gap caused by recent changes to curb illegal immigration.

The article also mentions that builders and other businesses have complained of worker shortages. Evidently, the U.S. workers displaced by illegal immigration flows (at least in Colorado) are not so eager to take over pumpkin picking, roofing and car washing as has been claimed.

20

So what? Other businesses raise wages in periods when demand exceeds the supply of workers. Raise wages, and Americans will do any job. Any job.