Immigration Reduces Crime Rates - per study (1 Viewer)

[Sabine]

Immigration Reduces Crime Rates By LiveScience Staff
posted: 18 March 2008 ET



Contrary to popular stereotypes, areas undergoing immigration are associated with lower violence, not spiraling crime, according to a new study.
Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson examined crime and immigration in Chicago and around the United States to find the truth behind the popular perception that increasing immigration leads to crime.
Sampson’s study results, detailed in the winter issue of the American Sociological Association’s Contexts magazine, summarizes patterns from seven years’ worth of violent acts in Chicago committed by whites, blacks and Hispanics from 180 neighborhoods of varying levels of integration. He also analyzed recent data from police records and the U.S. Census for all communities in Chicago.
Based on assumptions that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes and settle in poor, disorganized communities, prevailing wisdom holds that the concentration of immigrants and an influx of foreigners drive up crime rates.
However, Sampson shows that concentrated immigration predicts lower rates of violence across communities in Chicago, with the relationship strongest in poor neighborhoods.......

Immigration Reduces Crime Rates | LiveScience

I remember some pretty heated discussions on immigration and concerns about immigration related crime. Does this surprise anyone?


.

 

[saintkev]

Yeah but ya gotta factor in, they are criminals by just being here. Right?

 

[RebSaint]

Yeah but ya gotta factor in, they are criminals by just being here. Right?

The article deals with legal immigration, if you click on the "immigrants" tab included in the article.

Raking In Welfare Not Key For U.S. Citizenship Seekers | LiveScience

 

[jlam]

Yeah but ya gotta factor in, they are criminals by just being here. Right?

Lmao. There takin' are jawbs!1!

 

[Sabine]

Yeah but ya gotta factor in, they are criminals by just being here. Right?

No, because they are looking at other kinds of crimes. Some of the study involved legal immigrants and found that areas with high concentrations of immigrants had lower violent crimes rates. We can assume that many illegal immigrants are drawn to areas with high immigrant populations of similar backgrounds primarily for the built-in social networks, so increased illegal immigration doesn't appear to lead to increased violent crimes either. Also, the part of the study that was about Chicago included both legal and illegal immigrants. Also, some of the statistics are for entire cities where both illegal and legal immigrants reside.

This is the article that I should have posted which goes into more detail than the mini version posted above:

Rethinking Crime and Immigration

The summer of 2007 witnessed a perfect storm of controversy over immigration to the United States. After building for months with angry debate, a widely touted immigration reform bill supported by President George W. Bush and many leaders in Congress failed decisively. Recriminations soon followed across the political spectrum.
Just when it seemed media attention couldn’t be greater, a human tragedy unfolded with the horrifying execution-style murders of three teenagers in Newark, N.J., attributed by authorities to illegal aliens.
Presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo (R–Colorado) descended on Newark to blame city leaders for encouraging illegal immigration, while Newt Gingrich declared the “war at home” against illegal immigrants was more deadly than the battlefields of Iraq. National headlines and outrage reached a feverish pitch, with Newark offering politicians a potent new symbol and a brown face to replace the infamous Willie Horton, who committed armed robbery and rape while on a weekend furlough from his life sentence to a Massachusetts prison. Another presidential candidate, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, seemed to capture the mood of the times at the Prescott Bush Awards Dinner: “Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women, and children around the world.”
Now imagine a nearly opposite, fact-based scenario. Consider that immigration—even if illegal—is associated with lower crime rates in most disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. Or that increasing immigration tracks with the broad reduction in crime the United States has witnessed since the 1990s............

Contexts Magazine Rethinking Crime and Immigration

 

[saintkev]

The article deals with legal immigration, if you click on the "immigrants" tab included in the article.

Raking In Welfare Not Key For U.S. Citizenship Seekers | LiveScience

You with your "whiffs"and red X's has to be the most annoying,conceted,condescending poster on this board.

 

[jimwnola]

Having now read what is says, I am not surprised. If you look at US crime statistics, the rate of violent crime within the african american community is virtually off the chart, and the US, as a whole, has a high rate of violent crime. Whether it be the lingerigng effects of slavery, failed social programs, freedom, drugs,the love of guns, or the "cowboy mentality," violent crime in the US is high. Most of it is related to the off the chart violence taking place in the inner city.

Although property crime is quite common south of the border, violent crime is not. Statistics show the second highest percentage for incarceration in the US is hispanic males. The key thing to note about the study is that it is referring to only violent crime. Since almost anyplace has less violent crime than our inner cities, virtually any immigration into those cities should help the violent crime rate.

 

[Severum]

You with your "whiffs"and red X's has to be the most annoying,conceted,condescending poster on this board.

 

[RebSaint]

You with your "whiffs"and red X's has to be the most annoying,conceted,condescending poster on this board.

Regarding immigration reform. Real immigration reform vis a vis illegal immigration won't happen unless something is done to enforce the laws on the books regarding those corporations and small businesses who hire illegals, but this article underscores the fact that this country has been a haven for those from other nations wishing to achieve the American dream and are a boon to the economy.

I suspect that legal immigrants are able to forge communities comparable to the German, Irish, Polish, French, Japanese, Chinese, etc. immmigrants who flooded this country at various points in history which have provided the unique cultural diversity which is most evident in the largest metropoles.

 

[LSSpam]

Hahahahahahahaha

I have a strong suspicion Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson isn't as clever as his degree suggests he is.

Sampson’s arguments are supported at the national level as well. Significant immigration growth — including by illegal aliens — occurred in the mid-1990s, peaking at the end of the decade. During this time, the national homicide rate plunged.

Oh, you mean during the middle of an economic boom? Really?

Gee, I wonder if immigrants aren't attracted to economic boom areas. You know, areas with lots of new service, construction, and other day labor type jobs opening up as part of an expanding economy?



Obviously we can't see the whole report, but i'd give pretty good odds the correlation exists between immigration and prosperity and reduced crime rates and prosperity, not immigration and reduced crime rates.

This isn't to say immigrants are hardened violent criminals. His inferrence is undoubtly correct "Reasons commonly cited for the apparent paradox of first generation immigrants, especially Mexicans, are motivation to work, ambition and a desire not to be deported, characteristics that predispose them to low crime.". But that only explains the immigrant population.

The idea that the presence of immigrants lowers crime in other demographics is, frankly, absurd.

 

[RebSaint]

Hahahahahahahaha

I have a strong suspicion Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson isn't as clever as his degree suggests he is.



Oh, you mean during the middle of an economic boom? Really?

Gee, I wonder if immigrants aren't attracted to economic boom areas. You know, areas with lots of new service, construction, and other day labor type jobs opening up as part of an expanding economy?



Obviously we can't see the whole report, but i'd give pretty good odds the correlation exists between immigration and prosperity and reduced crime rates and prosperity, not immigration and reduced crime rates.

This isn't to say immigrants are hardened violent criminals. His inferrence is undoubtly correct "Reasons commonly cited for the apparent paradox of first generation immigrants, especially Mexicans, are motivation to work, ambition and a desire not to be deported, characteristics that predispose them to low crime.". But that only explains the immigrant population.

The idea that the presence of immigrants lowers crime in other demographics is, frankly, absurd.

These are good points, but still it stands to reason that if this study went too far in its findings, conversely it shouldn't be assumed that a sudden influx of legal immigrants wouldn't necessarily increase the crime rate.

The crime rate expotentially increased in the late 19th century, but I think it had little to do with immigration. I guess the usefulness in this study is that correlation =/causation with immigration/crime one way or the other.

 

[Sabine]

Texas estimates that of 21,000,000 residents approximately 1,500,000 are undocumented immigrants. 7.14%

Total Texas Department of Criminal Justice population 151, 852 of which 6.76% are
Offenders Claiming Foreign Citizenship (10,280)

Claiming Foreign Citizenship does not mean they are illegal immigrants. So, the percentage of illegals in Texas prisons is notably less than the percentage of illegal immigrants in Texas' overall population.

 

[LSSpam]

I guess the usefulness in this study is that correlation =/causation with immigration/crime one way or the other.

If that's the usefulness, why is it being portrayed as suggesting something totally different?

"We’re so used to thinking about immigrant assimilation that we’ve failed to fully appreciate how immigrants themselves shape their host society."
. . .
"In today’s society," Sampson said, "immigration and the increasing cultural diversity that accompanies it generate the sort of conflicts of culture that lead not to increased crime but nearly the opposite."

It smacks of agenda. Admittedly amongst other points, he seems to be trying to demonstrate a clear correlation between immigration and a reduction in violence across multiple demographics, and then rationalizing (without support) reasons for that.

Which is silly. You know as well as I do that crime is demonstrably and solidly connected to economic well-being/prosperity. It's an extremely well researched/well established correlation.

And it stands to reason, I'm not even going to bother looking it up, that immigration follows a similiar pattern.

Clearly then, immigration follows expanding economic opportunity. If a local economy is improving (even relatively speaking, such as a poor area with an improving economy) crime will decrease and immigration will increase.

I don't even need a study for that.

I agree with his other stated point, that immigrant Hispanics probably have a lower rate of crime then their socio-economic bracket would suggest, likely due to the factors he noted (motivation to work, fear of deportation), but I seriously disagree with his attempts to link immigration to broader decreases in crime.

 

[LSSpam]

The only real benefit I can see to this is the study seems to suggest that illegal immigrants don't displace enough marginal members of other demographics (poor whites/poor blacks) that crime rates increase for those groups. But even that falls in line with what I said above, namely that immigration would occur most not just for a "good" economy (which could still be relatively stagnant and therefore an influx of new workers would inevitably replace old workers rendering them unemployed) but an "expanding" economy (in which case new jobs are being created, probably at a rate exceeding the current employee work force prompting immigration in the first place).

 

[RebSaint]

Which is silly. You know as well as I do that crime is demonstrably and solidly connected to economic well-being/prosperity. It's an extremely well researched/well established correlation.

I'm not sure if I agree completely with this assessment, but agree that it is a mitigating factor, among many other things, to keeping crime rates low.

And it stands to reason, I'm not even going to bother looking it up, that immigration follows a similiar pattern.

Clearly then, immigration follows expanding economic opportunity. If a local economy is improving (even relatively speaking, such as a poor area with an improving economy) crime will decrease and immigration will increase.

I don't even need a study for that.

I agree with his other stated point, that immigrant Hispanics probably have a lower rate of crime then their socio-economic bracket would suggest, likely due to the factors he noted (motivation to work, fear of deportation), but I seriously disagree with his attempts to link immigration to broader decreases in crime.

Not necessarily. I agree with you that it is a bit presumptious to assume that a demographic change, save for a pretty momentous one--would affect the economic health of a country or community one way or another, but regardless of the United States's economic health, it'll still be a popular entrepot for immigrants, especially from improvished nations whereby the economic opportunities are virtually nil.

As to the recent post, I would agree--legal immigrants are most likely to find stable jobs, establish communities, and build a capital base which contributes to the local, regional, and national economy--agenda? Maybe its a subtle endorsement of temporary measures/work visas which were a controversial part of the most recent efforts at immigration reform.