The murder of Kathyrn Steinle by an undocumented immigrant has reignited the national debate on illegal immigration, with Republicans politicizing the murder to pass the "Enforce the Law for

Sanctuary Cities Act" (H.R. 3009), a bill that would defund state and local law enforcement associated with "sanctuary cities". Though Steinle's murder may seem to be powerful evidence of a criminal

problem the US has with undocumented immigrants, H.R. 3009 is a dangerous attempt at the single-issue politicization of law enforcement and is based upon fallacious reasoning unsupported by peer-

reviewed literature.

Robert J. Sampson, a Harvard professor of sociology and former President of the American Criminological Society, published a study in 2008 in the aftermath of the murder of three teenagers in

Newark, NJ by undocumented immigrants, when politicians including Newt Gingrich had declared that the "war at home" against such immigrants was more deadly than the War in Iraq. In the study of

3,000 individuals in Chicago, including undocumented immigrants, regression analysis found that Hispanic Americans do better on many social indicators than socioeconomic factors predict, including the

propensity to violence.

Even when controlling for environmental and economic factors, first-generation immigrants were 45% less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans while second-generation immigrants

were 22% less likely. This trend was seen in other races as well. Since undocumented immigrants tend to move to neighborhoods already networked with legal first-generation immigrants, and since

there was little evidence of sampling bias due to confidential reporting mechanisms, it was concluded that immigration diversity, whether undocumented or documented, is protective against violence,

especially in high poverty neighborhoods.
read more : Republican Illegal Immigration Policy Will Increase Crime*|*Anhvinh Doanvo





The above graphic is excerpted from Sampson's paper, "Rethinking Crime and Immigration". It indicates
that immigration, whether documented or undocumented, is strongly correlated with reduced crime in high-poverty
neighborhoods.