Using estimates of undocumented immigrants to study the immigration-crime relationship

Abstract

The debate about undocumented immigration and its potential relation to crime continues to boil in the United States. We study this relationship by using two sets of estimates for the 2014 undocumented foreign-born population in U.S. metropolitan areas acquired from the Pew Research Center and the Migration Population Institute, 2013-2015 FBI Uniform Crime Report data, and 2011-2015 American Community Survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau, to model the association between undocumented immigration and violent and property crime. Findings are consistent across all estimates of metropolitan undocumented populations. Net of relevant covariates, we find negative effects of undocumented immigration on the overall property crime rate, larceny, and burglary; effects in models using violent crime measures as the outcomes are statistically non-significant. Although the results are based on cross-sectional data, they mirror other research findings that immigration either reduces or has no impact on crime, on average, and contribute to a growing literature on the relationship between immigration and crime.

Disparate incarceration rates of foreign citizens in Europe compared to Anglo‐Saxon countries

“…Bui (2009) found first-generation immigrant youth were less likely to engage in delinquency and substance use than other youth. Light and Miller (2018) and Light et al (2020) both reported a negative relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime in the U.S., while Adelman et al (2021) found a negative relationship between undocumented immigration and property crimes, and Adelman et al (2017) reported that foreign-born individuals are much less likely than native-born Americans to commit either violent or property crimes. Nowrasteh (2019) found that the arrest and conviction rates for both legal and illegal immigrants in Texas in 2017 were significantly lower than those of native-born Americans.…”

“…(2020) both reported a negative relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime in the U.S., while Adelman et al. (2021) found a negative relationship between undocumented immigration and property crimes, and Adelman et al. (2017) reported that foreign‐born individuals are much less likely than native‐born Americans to commit either violent or property crimes.…”

Latino Paradox or Black Exception? Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in the 21st Century

“…This is a violation of the substantive tenets of the ecological school, a set of ideas that explained immigration and crime trends early in the 20th century and can explain them now. Yet, researchers continue referring to a Latino Paradox [35][36][37] or immigrant paradox [38][39][40][41][42].…”