Thread: Harvard Study: Immigration Reduces Crime Rates

Immigration Reduces Crime Rates

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.

Not only does immigration appear to be "protective" against violence in poverty areas, violence was significantly lower among Mexican-Americans compared to blacks and whites. Sampson refers to this as the "Latino Paradox," whereby Hispanic Americans do better on a range of social indicators - including propensity to violence - than one would expect, given their socioeconomic disadvantages.

Sampson's analysis also revealed that first-generation immigrants were 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans. Controlling for immigrant generation even narrowed the violence gap between whites and blacks in Chicago by 14 percent.

"The pattern of immigrant generational status and lower crime rates is not restricted to Latinos; it extends to help explain white-black differences as well," Sampson said. "We're so used to thinking about immigrant assimilation that we've failed to fully appreciate how immigrants themselves shape their host society."

Immigration is therefore not just a Hispanic issue; although little noticed, increasing foreign-born diversity among blacks (e.g., from the West Indies and Africa) is associated with lower crime even within segregated black communities.

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. Crime dropped even in immigration hot spots, such as Los Angeles (where it dropped 45 percent overall), San Jose, Dallas and Phoenix.

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. Sampson also argues that contemporary immigrants tend to come from a multitude of cultures around the world where violence isn't rewarded as a strategy for establishing reputation or preserving honor, as in American "street culture."

"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."

"...violence was significantly lower among Mexican-Americans compared to blacks and whites"

I guess that's why so many people are killed in Mexico by drug cartels and thug criminals. Gee, maybe we should all move to Mexico as Mexicans are so much safer to be around than Americans. I guess all those rapes, robberies, carjackings, child molestations, DUIs, Hit and Runs, identity theft, and on and on and on are just figments of our racist imigination.

And if you believe this crap.............................................. ...........
I read this the other day. Don't let "Harvard study" throw you.


...violence was significantly lower among Mexican-Americans compared to blacks and whites"

So why are Hispanics being killed every day? Little kids too.

Did they differentiate between immigrants and illegal aliens?

Immigrants will be on their best behavior or they will get a fast ticket out of here. You commit a crime, it will jeopardize your citizenship application.

Dixie

Harvard University sociologist...

For some reason unknown to me (well, sort of), sociologists have a strange propensity to not differentiate between LEGAL immigrants and ILLEGAL ones. Maybe it's because they philosophically like to align themselves with the 'no one is illegal crowd', but even me, with a humble MSc, would never publish such an article that could be so readily identified and accused of junk science so easily.

If this is what passes as 'scholarly social sciences research' in our top line Ivy League universities, well, yes folks, we really ARE in trouble...

Chasing back one level closer to the original source of this article...

http://www.livescience.com/strangene...ion-crime.html

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.

US Census data as a source - and when the census people come knocking on your door, do they ask,....'oh, by the way, are you an illegal immigrant'?
Of course not. There's no way they could even BEGIN to try to accommodate legal status in this methodology.

They need to change their methods/source data as to account for legal status. Without addressing that aspect rigorously, in the end, it's just a GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) type situation.

The last U.S. census was in 2000--8 years ago so numbers may have changed greatly since then.

As well as failing to distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants the author 'played' with the definition of crime. The majority of the time he is speaking of 'violent acts' rather than all crimes so the study is flawed and misleading.

What is the definition of a 'violent act' for this study? Murder and rape?

Remember all the crimes that are primarily non-violent in nature:
Some traffic accidents and violations
Driving without a driver's license
Idenity theft
Fraud
Making fraudelent documents
Money laundering
Tax evasion
Some human smuggling
Selling drugs
Prostitution
Shop-lifting
Writing bad checks
Vehicle theft
Voter registration without being a citizen
Defacing property with graffiti
etc.

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

The author is the Head of the Sociology Dept. at Harvard.

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc/faculty/sampson/

Here's a rather strange, ironic and even FUNNY twist...

If you look down the right (light blue) sidebar in the web page above, you'll see that his office hours are "by appointment only".
Apparently, uninvited visitors to his office are unwelcome and likely turned away; but, he expects uninvited visitors to the country to be welcomed with open arms without question.... What sheer hypocrisy.

Mr. Sampson,

After a cursory read of your recent paper 'Rethinking Crime and Immigration", I noted at least 2 glaring problems with your methodology and/or summary results.


1. From Page 2:

'Consider first the "Latino Paradox". Hispanic Americans do better on a wide range of social indicators-including propensity to violence-than one would expect given their socioeconomic disadvantages....'

To begin, there is no differentiation between LEGAL immigrants - who have every reason and desire to avoid ANY problems with the law (doing so would jeopardize their citizenship petition - required to be able to remain in the US and eventually gain citizenship, not to mention that countless hours of paperwork, and the thousands of dollars required to complete the application processes, etc), and ILLEGAL immigrants. Who have much less practical stake in adhering to the law (eg. there is no citizenship petition pending, no investment of thousands of dollars at stake, no possibility of falling 'out of status', etc). Plus, the fact that this issue is at the core of a highly visible public debate makes it's apparent omission even more curious.

Following on the above... the data relied upon in the study curiously does not contain any information about legal status. Both the City of Chicago and the US Census do not seek to identify nor record such information in the official performance of their assigned work. In fact, both are explicitly prohibited from even raising the subject of legal status. The data used necessarily excluded the most important stratifying variable - that of legal status. The decision to purposefully select these data sources knowing that they exclude what many researches consider to be the MOST IMPORTANT VARIABLE or CHARACTERISTICS regarding the subject matter is a curious one indeed.

Second, in order to be broadly applicable at a national level, the study should have sought and used data from more than just a single geographic area. Data from a representative sampling of regions and environments needed to be included in order to facilitate the extrapolation to the nation as a whole. Additional locations from throughout the US should have been included. The demographics of which exhibit vastly differing characteristics with respect to immigration in terms of source nation, industries/work activities, etc. Further, the failure to examine immigration in rural America is curious as well.

Third, the paper focuses upon the relative comparison between 'new' (first generation 'immigrants') and 'third generation immigrants'. I would take issue with a couple claims here. For one, an 'immigrant' in a purely technical legal definition, is, by US Immigration Law, defined as a foreign-born national that has sought and complied with the requirements to become a legal resident and eventual citizen under our established immigration policies. The operable terms used in Federal immigration law are: "Alien" and "Illegal Alien". The often used, but baseless 'illegal immigrant' has no corresponding counterpart nor even mention in US law. If you are an 'immigrant', then, by law, you are LEGAL. There is no gray area nor ambiguity in the term or definition.

The process you allude to, but do not say outright, is one of assimilation. Certainly, over time, there is a well known time curve by which new groups of immigrants ‘blend into’ the American fabric of society. In fact, in some studies I have read on the subject, a full or near-full assimilation into US culture is successfully achieved by the second generation (ie. the children of immigrants almost always are blended into American society owing to a common education, the mastery of the English language and have gained the understanding of the vast array of social mores and nuances). This is no surprise and considered common knowledge by many Americans and academic researchers alike.


From Page 2:

"Consider the implications of these findings when set against the backdrop of one of the most profound social changes to visit the United States in recent decades. Foreign immigration to the United States rose sharply in the 1990s, especially from Mexico and especially to immigrant enclaves in large cities. Overall, the foregin-born population increased by more than 50 percent in 10 years, to 31 million in 2000. A report by the Pew Hispanic Center found immigration grew most significantly in the mid-1990s and hit its peak at the end of the decade, when the national homicide rate plunged to levels not seen since the 1960s. Immigrant flows have receded since 2001 but remain high, while the national homicide rate leveled off and seems now to be creeping up. Both trends are compared over time at left.

The pattern upends popular stereotypes. Among the public, policy makers, and even many academics, a common expectation is that the concentration of immigrants and the influx of foreigners drive up crime rates because of the assumed propensity..."

How did the study control for, or attempt to account for, the overall shift in demographics of the US population? Specifically, the US population is aging, and with increasing age, serious crime rates are known to predictably drop. It is at least intellectually dishonest, perhaps academically deficient, to imply that the lower overall decrease in violent crime is associated SOLELY with a small sub-population of 'immigrants', without addressing nor controlling for, the overall expected decrease in violence which would have occurred anyway within the entire population.


Here is a very simple statistic I offer for your consideration:

Currently, according to recent statistics I have seen published form the US BoC (Census Bureau) about 14%-15% of the US population is foreign-born. At the same time, approximately 27% of all the persons in Federal custody (eg. in Federal Prison) are listed as foreign-born. What explains this difference?

Sincerely,

[me]

I'm not buying this!!! Better start reporting the truth... this BS isn't flying anymore!!!!!!!! We, Americans are WAKING UP TO THE TRUTH...and the LIES MANY OF YOU ARE TELLING!!!!!!!!

I agree with many of the posters here that, as long as illegal immigrants and legal immigrants are lumped together, NO legitimate conclusion can be reached regarding criminal likelihood.

Isn't it funny that the media NEVER points out this obvious ploy of lumping them together. Why are they lumped together? Because advocate groups know supporting ILLEGALS by themselves won't garner any support! Instead, they have to use legal immigrants as human shields to further their cause.

After all, they couldn't call us names and lob argumentum ad hominem attacks if they had to admit we fully support LEGAL immigrants, could they? Instead, they'd rather use legal immigrants to further their cause while shuffling illegal ones in the back door.

I wonder why so many legal immigrants put up with it?