Thread: Immigrants do not commit most crimes

Immigrants do not commit most crimes

By: EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer
NORTH COUNTY -- A common perception that immigrants are responsible for much of the nation's crime is not supported by evidence, according to a study released Monday by an immigrant rights group.

Violent and property crime rates have dropped 34 percent and 26 percent respectively since 1994. At the same time, the illegal immigrant population doubled to an estimated 12 million, according to the study, called the Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation.
But critics said the study is biased and based on incomplete Census data.
The authors, sociologists Ruben Rumbaut and Walter Ewing, said immigrants have faced similar perceptions throughout the nation's history. Previous waves of immigrants, such as Italians and Irish, were often viewed as more inclined to crime than native-born people, they said.

Similar views are now thrust upon the newest immigrants, who are predominantly from Latin America, the authors said.

"This myth is not supported by the data and is refuted by empirical data," said Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at UC Irvine.

Researchers said they did not analyze legal and illegal immigrant populations separately, because the U.S. Census data does not ask whether immigrants are in the country legally or illegally.

Based on 2000 Census information, the study concludes that the problem of crime in the United States is not caused or aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. The study was released by the Immigration Policy Center, a research organization that focuses on the contributions immigrants make the country.

The policy center is a division of the American Immigration Law Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focusing on immigration.

One of the key findings the study cites is that U.S.-born men, ages 18-39, are five times more likely to be incarcerated than foreign-born men in the same age group. However, the "paradox of assimilation" is that the children of immigrants tend to have higher incarceration rates than their parents, according to the study.
"Their children are another story," said Robert Sampson, a professor of sociology at Harvard University. "They become acculturated. They don't look back at the conditions in Mexico, El Salvador or Vietnam."

Critics of the study said the report is based on faulty data.

Steven Camarota, research director for the Washington D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, said 2000 Census data for the immigrant prison population was not reliable because of problems in collecting the information. The center advocates stricter immigration laws.

"The process of collecting information from institutions completely broke down" during the 2000 Census, Camarota said.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the study's conclusions are wrong, Camarota added.

"I think it's probably correct that the foreign-born are less likely to commit crimes," Camarota said. But, "It is the children of illegal immigrants (that are likely to commit more crimes) not the illegal immigrants themselves."
Census officials could not be reached for comment Monday.

Gary Walker, who cofounded the North County-based group Predatory Aliens Stop Killing Our Police!, also said the study released Monday is not credible. His group focuses on raising awareness about crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

"It's a very agenda-driven type of report to spin the facts," Walker said.

The facts paint a very different picture, Walker said. He points to a Government Accountability Office report that says 27 percent of the federal prison population is made up of immigrants and other sources that he says point to a larger crime problem, including anti-illegal immigration Web sites, local news and police blotters.

In recent months, many local governments, including the Escondido City Council and the City of Hazleton, Pa., have adopted laws targeting illegal immigration in part due to the perception that immigrants bring more crime to cities.

Bill Flores, a North County civil rights activist and retired San Diego County assistant sheriff, said the study's conclusions are similar to a study he conducted on bookings between 1997 and 1999 at San Diego County jails run by the sheriff's department.

"They only surprise that I saw was the fact that the local picture was such an accurate reflection of the national scene," Flores said.

That study, called "Bookings -- A Study of Persons Detained in the San Diego County Jail System," looked at about 100,000 bookings a year.

The study suggested that immigrants' place of birth had little to do with the type of crime being committed. About 28 percent of the crimes of all the crimes committed by those incarcerated in county jails were violent, regardless of whether they were born in San Diego County, elsewhere in the U.S. or in another country, the study showed.

Activists on the other side of the immigration debate say that the illegal immigrant crime wave is no myth.

Researcher Rumbaut said anecdotal evidence used by some anti-illegal immigration groups is part of an emotional and political response to immigration, but it is not based on scientific research.

"There's not a single authoritative source for those numbers," he said. "Those numbers seem to be pulled out of thin air."

-- Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-3511 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/02 ... _26_07.txt

according to a study released Monday by an immigrant rights group.



Totally unbiased ----------

Any crime by illegal immigrants is too many because they should not even be here.

Only the kids, huh? Why is it that 1 in 12 illegals detaned by ICE have criminal records?

If you believe this, then I'm 21 and weigh 110 lbs