PDF Document, 2.29MBRubén G. Rumbaut is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. He is coauthor of Immigrant America: A Portrait, the 3rd edition of which was published in 2006.
Walter A. Ewing is a research associate at the Immigration Policy Center and has been researching and writing on immigration policy since 1998. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School in 1997.
Public Perceptions of Immigrants and Crime
*This essay originally appeared as a special report for the Immigration Policy Center, a division of the American Immigration Law Foundation. It is printed here with the permission of the IPC and the AILF.
Myths and stereotypes about immigrants and crime often provide the underpinnings for public policies and practices.1 These stereotypes are propagated through movies and television series like The Untouchables, The Godfather, Scarface, Miami Vice, and The Sopranos—all of which project an enduring image of immigrant communities permeated by criminal elements. Moreover, the media long have been replete with stories of violent crimes committed by the Italian mafia, Cuban marielitos, Colombian cocaine cartels, Japanese yakuza, Chinese triads, and Central American gangs such as the Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). Similar views greeted Irish, Jewish, Polish, and other immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The extent to which stereotypes such as these have permeated U.S. society is apparent in the results of the National Opinion Research Center’s 2000 General Social Survey, which interviewed a nationally representative sample of adults to measure attitudes toward and perceptions of immigration in a “multi-ethnic United States.” Asked whether “more immigrants cause higher crime rates,” 25 percent said “very likely” and another 48 percent “somewhat likely.” In other words, about three-fourths (73 percent) of Americans believed that immigration is causally related to more crime. That was a much higher proportion than the 60 percent who believed that “more immigrants were [somewhat or very] likely to cause Americans to lose jobs,” or the 56 percent who thought that “more immigrants were [somewhat or very] likely to make it harder to keep the country united.”2
Periods of increased immigration have historically been accompanied by nativist alarms, perceptions of threat, and pervasive stereotypes of newcomers, particularly during economic downturns or national crises (such as the 2000-2002 economic recession and the “war on terror” of the post-9/11 era), and when immigrants have arrived en masse and differed substantially from the native-born in religion, language, physical appearance, and world region of origin.3 The present period is no exception. California’s Proposition 187, which was passed with 59 percent of the statewide vote in 1994 (but challenged as unconstitutional and overturned by a federal court), asserted in its opening lines that “the people of California…have suffered and are suffering economic hardship [and] personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state.”4
Similarly, the “Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance” passed in 2006 by the city council of Hazleton, Pennsylvania—the first of a number of such ordinances passed by local councils in 2006—declares in part that “illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates” and seeks accordingly to secure for the city’s legal residents and citizens “the right to live in peace free of the threat of crime” and to protect them from “crime committed by illegal aliens.”5 Such attitudes find support at the highest levels of political leadership. For instance, in his May 15, 2006, address to the nation on immigration reform, President George W. Bush asserted that: “Illegal immigration puts pressure on public schools and hospitals, it strains state and local budgets, and brings crime to our communities.”6
The misperception that the foreign-born, especially illegal immigrants, are responsible for higher crime rates is deeply rooted in American public opinion and is sustained by media anecdote and popular myth. But this perception is not supported empirically. In fact, it is refuted by the preponderance of scientific evidence. Both contemporary and historical data, including investigations carried out by major government commissions over the past century, have shown repeatedly and systematically that immigration actually is associated with lower crime rates.
A New Era of Mass Immigration
Roughly 12 million immigrants, or 30 percent of all foreign-born persons in the country, are unauthorized. The number of illegal immigrants has more than doubled since 1994. According to estimates by demographer Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center, by 2005 two-thirds (66 percent) of the unauthorized population had been in the country for 10 years or less, and the largest share, 40 percent or 4.4 million people, had been in the country five years or less. There were 1.8 million children who were unauthorized, or 16 percent of the total. In addition, 3.1 million children who are U.S. citizens by birth were living in households in which the head of the family or a spouse was unauthorized. About 56 percent of the unauthorized population was from Mexico, and another 22 percent from elsewhere in Latin America. The rest come from Asia, Europe, Canada, Africa, and elsewhere.10
Since 1993, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border in four key sectors from San Diego to El Paso and the lower Rio Grande Valley, including a tripling of the number of Border Patrol agents and a quadrupling of the Border Patrol budget, has not deterred the flow of unauthorized migrants. Rather, as shown by several expert analyses, it has led to a booming industry of professional smugglers (coyotes) and redirected the flow of undocumented immigrants through more isolated and dangerous desert terrain, resulting in hundreds of deaths each year. Moreover, undocumented immigrants are heading to new destinations across all 50 states, including communities like Hazleton, rather than just traditional destinations in California and Texas. Another unintended consequence of heightened border enforcement is that the largely temporary population of “sojourner” workers that predominated in the past has been transformed into a population of permanent “settlers” who bring their families and stay, since the risks and costs of dangerous border crossings have sharply increased. For instance, in recent years coyotes have charged Mexican migrants about $3,000 per person to cross the border.11
Nonetheless, the illegal immigrant population still is disproportionately made up of poor young males who have recently arrived from Mexico—as well as from El Salvador, Guatemala, and a few other Latin American countries—to work in low-wage jobs requiring little formal education. These migrants are responding to the growing demand for their labor generated by the U.S. economy, which faces a demographic challenge to future labor-force growth as the fertility rate of natives declines and a growing number of native-born workers retire.12 As the Congressional Budget Office put it in a 2005 report: “The baby-boom generation’s exit from the labor force could well foreshadow a major shift in the role of foreign-born workers in the labor force. Unless native fertility rates increase, it is likely that most of the growth in the U.S. labor force will come from immigration by the middle of the century.”13 Conventional wisdom presumes a connection between the characteristics of workers who fill less-skilled jobs (young, male, poor, high-school dropout, ethnic minority) and the likelihood of involvement with crime, all the more when those young male workers are illegal migrants. But if immigration (legal or illegal) were associated with increasing crime rates, the official crime statistics would clearly reveal it. The opposite, however, is the case.
Crime Rates Have Declined As Immigration Has Increased
At the same time that immigration—especially undocumented immigration—has reached and surpassed historic highs, crime rates in the United States have declined, notably in cities with large immigrant populations (including cities with large numbers of undocumented immigrants such as Los Angeles and border cities like San Diego and El Paso, as well as New York, Chicago, and Miami). The Uniform Crime Reports released each year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) demonstrate the decline of both violent crime and property crime at the same time that the foreign-born population has grown.
From 1994 to 2005, the violent crime rate overall declined 34.2 percent, reaching the lowest level ever in 2005. In particular, homicide rates fell 37.8 percent to levels last seen in the late 1960s, robbery rates dropped 40.8 percent, and assault rates declined 31.9 percent {Figure 1}.14 Moreover, the proportion of serious violent crimes committed by juveniles decreased during this period and the number of gun crimes stabilized at levels last seen in 1988.15
The property crime rate as a whole declined 26.4 percent between 1994 and 2005. Specifically, burglary rates have stabilized after years of decline, theft rates reached the lowest level ever recorded in 2005, and motor-vehicle theft rates leveled off after 2000 {Figure 2}.16
|
|
Incarceration Rates Have Increased
Department of Justice statistics on incarceration are not broken down by nativity or generation, but the available data indicate that imprisonment rates vary widely by gender, ethnicity, and education. In 2005, about 93 percent of inmates in federal and state prisons were men, and there were 3,145 non-Hispanic black male prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States and 1,244 Hispanic males per 100,000, compared to 471 non-Hispanic white males per 100,000.20 The majority of prison inmates are high-school dropouts.21 Among some minorities, particularly native-born blacks, imprisonment has become a common and defining event for men in early adulthood. As sociologists Becky Pettit and Bruce Western have noted, black men born in the late 1960s were more likely to have prison records than either military records or college degrees, and those who were high-school dropouts had a nearly 60 percent chance of having served time in prison by the end of the 1990s.22
Immigrants Have Lower Incarceration Rates Than Natives
In 2000, 3 percent of the 45.2 million males age 18 to 39 in the United States were in federal or state prisons or local jails at the time of the census. Surprisingly, at least from the vantage point of conventional wisdom, the incarceration rate of native-born men in this age group (3.5 percent) was 5 times higher than the incarceration rate of foreign-born men (0.7 percent). The foreign-born rate was nearly two-and-a-half times less than the 1.7 percent rate for native-born non-Hispanic white men and almost 17 times less than the 11.6 percent rate for native-born black men. The lower incarceration rate among immigrants was found in every pan-ethnic category without exception. For instance, native-born Hispanic men were nearly 7 times more likely to be in prison than foreign-born Hispanic men, while the incarceration rate of native-born non-Hispanic white men was almost 3 times higher than that of foreign-born non-Hispanic white men {Figure 3}.
|
|
|
Immigrants Have Lower Incarceration Rates Than Natives Among High-School Dropouts
|
Again, there was considerable variation in the incarceration rates of male high-school dropouts within each ethnic group. Among Hispanics, 0.7 percent of foreign-born Mexicans without a high-school diploma were imprisoned—more than 14 times less than the 10.1 percent of native-born male high-school dropouts of Mexican descent behind bars. Only 0.6 percent of foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan high-school dropouts were in prison, which was nearly 8 times lower than the 4.7 percent incarceration rate among native-born men of Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent who lacked high-school diplomas {Figure 7}.
|
|
The Risk Of Incarceration For Immigrants Increases Over Time
|
|
|
Similar Results From Other Studies
Other scholars, such as sociologist Robert J. Sampson, have addressed similar questions concerning immigration and crime and concluded that increased immigration is a major factor associated with lower crime rates. In a study of 180 Chicago neighborhoods from 1995 to 2002, Sampson and his colleagues found that Latin American immigrants were less likely than the U.S.-born to commit violent crimes even when they lived in dense communities with high rates of poverty. First-generation immigrants (foreign-born) were 45 percent less likely to commit violent crimes than were third-generation Americans (children of native-born parents), adjusting for family and neighborhood background. The second generation (those born in the United States to immigrant parents) was 22 percent less likely to commit violence than the third or higher generation.29 Similarly, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform concluded in a 1994 report that immigration is not associated with higher crime. The Commission compared crime rates in U.S.-Mexico border cities such as El Paso with cities elsewhere in the United States and found that crime rates generally were lower in border cities.30
Recent empirical studies by sociologists Ramiro Martínez and Matthew Lee of homicides in three high-immigration border cities (San Diego, El Paso, and Miami) and of drug violence in Miami and San Diego came to similar conclusions, further refuting commonly presumed linkages between immigration and criminality.31 In addition, several other studies have examined homicide rates among the Cuban refugees who arrived in the United States as a result of the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. Although these marielitos frequently were depicted in the media as prolific criminal offenders, even murderers, they in fact were not overrepresented among either homicide victims or offenders. Moreover, after only a short time in the United States, they were much less likely to commit crimes than Cubans who arrived in Miami before the Mariel Boatlift. As with south Florida in general, Miami experienced a sharp spike in homicides before the Mariel Cubans arrived in the city. Homicide rates continued to decline throughout the 1980s despite a steady inflow of Latin American immigrants. 32
Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) further demonstrate the intra- and inter-generational differences in delinquency and other risk behaviors among adolescents. Add Health is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of adolescents conducted in several “waves” since 1994. Drawing upon this survey, sociologists Kathleen Mullan Harris, and Hoan Bui and Ornuma Thingniramol, have found that second-generation youth were significantly more prone to engage in risk behaviors such as delinquency, violence, and substance abuse than foreign-born youth. In their analyses, every first-generation nationality had significantly fewer health problems and engaged in fewer risk behaviors than the comparable group of native-born non-Hispanic whites.33
In a sense, these findings should not come as news, for they are not new—merely forgotten and overruled by popular myth. In the first three decades of the 20th century, during the previous era of mass immigration, three major government commissions came to similar conclusions. The Industrial Commission of 1901, the [Dillingham] Immigration Commission of 1911, and the [Wickersham] National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement of 1931 each sought to measure how immigration resulted in increases in crime. Instead, each found lower levels of criminal involvement among the foreign-born and higher levels among their native-born counterparts.34 As the report of the Dillingham Commission concluded a century ago: “No satisfactory evidence has yet been produced to show that immigration has resulted in an increase in crime disproportionate to the increase in adult population. Such comparable statistics of crime and population as it has been possible to obtain indicate that immigrants are less prone to commit crime than are native Americans” {emphasis added}.35
Conclusion
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 impoverishing a genuine understanding—a situation that undermines the development of reasoned public responses to both crime and immigration.
Endnotes
1 See Ramiro Martínez, Jr. and Abel Valenzuela, Jr., eds., Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
2 Rubén G. Rumbaut and Richard D. Alba, “Perceptions of Group Size and Group Position in ‘Multi-Ethnic United States.’” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, August 2003. See also Richard D. Alba, Rubén G. Rumbaut and Karen Marotz, “A Distorted Nation: Perceptions of Racial/Ethnic Group Sizes and Attitudes toward Immigrants and Other Minorities,” Social Forces 84(2), December 2005: 899-917.
3 Brian N. Fry, Nativism and Immigration: Regulating the American Dream. New York: LFB Scholarly, 2006.
4 California Ballot Proposition 187, Section 1 (1994).
5 City Council of Hazleton, PA, Ordinance 2006-18: “Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance,” Sections 2(C) and 2(F).
6 White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “President Bush Addresses the Nation on Immigration Reform,” May 15, 2006.
7 As used in this report, “legal” immigrants consist of Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs)—about 40 percent of whom had been in the United States in other statuses (including temporary or unauthorized) before becoming LPRs—as well as LPRs who subsequently became naturalized U.S. citizens. “Illegal” immigrants are those who entered the country without proper authorization, or who entered the country lawfully with non-immigrant visas but subsequently over-stayed or violated the terms of their visas. Visa over-stayers and violators may make up as much as 40 percent of the illegal immigrant population (See Jeffrey S. Passel, The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.: Estimates Based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, March 7, 2006, p. 16).
8 Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850 to 2000 (Population Division Working Paper No. 81). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, February 2006, Table 1.
9 These figures are weighted estimates drawn from the March 2006 Current Population Survey (CPS).
10 Jeffrey S. Passel, The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S., March 7, 2006, pp. 2, 5, 7.
11 Wayne A. Cornelius, “Impacts of Border Enforcement on Unauthorized Mexican Migration to the United States.” New York: Social Science Research Council, on-line forum on “Border Battles: The U.S. Immigration Debates,” September 26, 2006 {http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Cornelius/}; Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002, Chapter 6.
12 See Immigration Policy Center, Economic Growth and Immigration: Bridging the Demographic Divide. Washington, DC: American Immigration Law Foundation, November 2005.
13 Congressional Budget Office, The Role of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market. Washington, DC: November 2005, p
14 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics—Data Online, “Reported Crime in United States—Total, 1960-2005” {http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/State/statebystaterun.cfm?stateid=52}.
15 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Key Crime and Justice Facts at a Glance” {http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm}.
16 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Reported Crime in United States-Total, 1960-2005.”
17 Roy Walmsley, World Prison Population List, 6th edition. London: University of London, King’s College, School of Law, International Centre for Prison Studies, February 2005, p. 1
18 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Corrections Statistics” {http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/correct.htm}; Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, Prisoners in 2005 (NCJ 215092). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2006, pp. 2, 8.
19 National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, Behind Bars: Substance Abuse and America’s Prison Population. New York: Columbia University, January 1998, p. 2.
20 Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, Prisoners in 2005, November 2006, pp. 4, 8.
21 Caroline Wolf Harlow, Education and Correctional Populations (NCJ 195670). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, January 2003, p. 2.
22 Becky Pettit and Bruce Western, “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course,” American Sociological Review 69 (2), April 2004: 156, 164.
23 Data from the 5% Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) of the 2000 Census are here used to measure the institutionalization rates of immigrants and natives, focusing on males 18 to 39, among whom the vast majority of the institutionalized are in correctional facilities. For a description of the methodology used to produce estimates of the incarcerated population from census data, see Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl, Recent Immigrants: Unexpected Implications for Crime and Incarceration (Working Paper 6067). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, June 1997.
24 Census Bureau data are not available on the specific ethnicities of native-born, non-Hispanic whites and blacks. Therefore, comparisons of the native-born and foreign-born by ethnic group are possible only for Hispanics and non-Hispanic Asians.
25 Data on education for these foreign-born populations are drawn from the 2000 Census, 5% PUMS. See also Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait, 3rd edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
26 Foreign-born non-Hispanic blacks include Jamaicans, Haitians, West Indians, Nigerians, etc.
27 Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl, “Recent Immigrants: Unexpected Implications for Crime and Incarceration,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 51(4), July 1998: 654-679.
28 Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl, Why Are Immigrants’ Incarceration Rates So Low? Evidence on Selective Immigration, Deterrence, and Deportation (WP 2005-19). Chicago: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, November 2005, p. 2.
29 Robert J. Sampson, Jeffrey D. Morenoff and Stephen Raudenbush, “Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence,” American Journal of Public Health 95(2), February 2005: 224-232. See also Eyal Press, “Do immigrants Make Us Safer?,” The New York Times Magazine, December 3, 2006.
30 U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility. Washington, DC: 1994, p. 20.
31 Ramiro Martínez, Jr., Matthew T. Lee and A. L. Nielsen, “Segmented Assimilation, Local Context and Determinants of Drug Violence in Miami and San Diego: Does Ethnicity and Immigration Matter?,” International Migration Review 38(1), March 2004: 131-157; Matthew T. Lee, Ramiro Martínez, Jr. and Richard B. Rosenfeld, “Does Immigration Increase Homicide? Negative Evidence from Three Border Cities,” Sociological Quarterly 42(4), September 2001: 559–580
32 For a summary of these studies, see Ramiro Martínez, Jr. and Matthew T. Lee, “On Immigration and Crime,” July 2000, pp. 498-501.
33 Kathleen Mullan Harris, “The Health Status and Risk Behavior of Adolescents in Immigrant Families,” in Donald J. Hernández, ed., Children of Immigrants: Health, Adjustment, and Public Assistance. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences Press, 1999, pp. 286-347; Hoan N. Bui and Ornuma Thingniramol, “Immigration and Self-Reported Delinquency: The Interplay of Immigrant Generations, Gender, Race, and Ethnicity,” Journal of Crime and Justice 28(2), 2005: 79-100.
34 For a summary of these reports, see Michael Tonry, “Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration,” in Michael Tonry, ed., Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration: Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996; Ramiro Martínez, Jr. and Matthew T. Lee, “On Immigration and Crime,” July 2000, pp. 495-498.
35 Reports of the Immigration Commission, 61st Congress, 3rd Session. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911, p. 168.
