Immigration, Crime, and Victimization: Rhetoric and Reality

Abstract

Contrary to popular perceptions that immigration increases crime, the research literature demonstrates that immigration generally serves a protective function, reducing crime. This review takes as its starting point the contradiction between the rhetoric and the reality of immigration and crime in the United States. We begin by exploring the conditions under which immigration reduces crime and those under which it has less or no effect, with particular attention to traditional and new destination sites. We then demonstrate how the moral panic about immigration has contributed to unprecedented levels of new legislation and intensified enforcement practices. These new laws and policies, we suggest, are making immigrants and their communities less safe. We consider some of the ways in which immigrants have become more vulnerable and how that vulnerability is patterned and nuanced. We close by examining recent research in other parts of the world, finding some similarities but also differences in the relationships among immigration, crime, and victimization.

The Interrelationships between Victimization, Fear, and Acculturation among Asian Immigrants

“…For specific types of victimization, Gorton and Van Hightower (1999) found that 17.4% of Hispanic female immigrant farm laborers sampled were victims of interpersonal violence within the previous year. In addition, while research on undocumented immigrants is limited, data suggest that these persons may have a significantly increased likelihood of being victimized (Bucher, Manasse, & Tarasawa, 2010;Zatz & Smith, 2012). While analysis of a single immigrant group can showcase certain predictors of victimization, the addition of a control group allows for ethnically diverse comparisons.…”

Restoring paradise in the Caribbean: combatting violence with numbers

“…To the contrary, intensified laws and enforcement practices against immigration may make these communities more vulnerable to being victimized (Nunziata 2014;Zatz and Smith 2012). shows the distribution of ethnicity in the five countries studied here.…”

Domestic migration, home rentals, and crime rates in China

“…With either micro or macro data, previous research either finds no relationship between immigrants and crime (Reid et al 2005) or reveals a decline in crime due to immigrants (Martinez 1997). There is research indicating that the association between immigrants and crime is entirely misleading (Zatz and Smith 2012).…”

“…These pose many potential threats in fire control, food safety, and public safety. The fragility of the residential space increases migrants' risk of being victims (Zatz and Smith 2012). Second, from the perspective of derivatives of crime, economic crime and ordinary crime can overlap or transformed into each other.…”

“…However, this attribution of crime to immigrants has not been consistently supported by empirical research in the West. Some studies even find that immigration may to some extent lead to a decrease in the crime rate (Wadsworth 2010;Zatz and Smith 2012).…”