[For those interested in the "crime" question, here is a link to an extremely comprehensive report, including charts and sources.]
The Myth of Immigrant Criminality
The Myth of Immigrant Criminality
Published on: May 23, 2007
http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Rumbault_Ewing/
"At the same time that immigration—especially undocumented immigration—has reached and surpassed historic highs, crime rates in the United States have declined, notably in cities with large immigrant populations (including cities with large numbers of undocumented immigrants such as Los Angeles and border cities like San Diego and El Paso, as well as New York, Chicago, and Miami). The Uniform Crime Reports released each year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) demonstrate the decline of both violent crime and property crime at the same time that the foreign-born population has grown."
4 comments:
And now for the bad news from the study:
"Second Generation
Incarceration rates increase significantly for all US-born coethnics without exception. That is most notable for Mexicans, whose incarceration rate increases more than eightfold to 5.9 percent among the US born; for Vietnamese (from 0.46 to 5.6 percent among the US born); and for the Laotians and Cambodians (from 0.92 percent to 7.26 percent, the highest of any group except for native blacks). Almost all of the US born among those of Latin American and Asian origin can be assumed to consist of second-generation persons, with the exception of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, whose numbers may include a sizable number (around 25 percent) of third-generation individuals. (Since 1980, when the questions on parents' country of birth were dropped, the decennial census has not permitted the precise identification of second vs. third or higher generations.)
Thus, while incarceration rates are found to be extraordinarily low among immigrants, they are also seen to rise rapidly by the second generation. Except for the Chinese and Filipinos, the rates of all US-born Latin American and Asian groups exceed that of the referent group of non-Hispanic white natives."
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=403
It's strange how this didn't make the title, or at least a subtitle (... and The Increased Criminality in Their Children). This news is actually worse than the good news, because the second generation is actually larger than the first.
We asked Professor Rubén Rumbaut, the article's author, about this comment. He replied: "The other half of the title was 'and the Paradox of Assimilation.' But the section dealing with that was cropped out for the sake of limited space in the SSRC abridged version that you posted. For the full report, plus an open letter based on it, see:
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/ipc_openletter0507.shtml"
On the broader issue, people promoting an anti-immigrant agenda often try to change the terms of the debate when the facts disprove their position. We hear over and over again about the crime wave supposedly caused by undocumented immigrants. When we show that immigrant criminality is a myth, the anti-immigrant side responds: the problem isn't the immigrants, it's their citizen children. Crime among the children is a real problem, but it's not an immigration problem--it reflects on our society and what happens to people of color growing up here.
I meant to say that Prof. Rumbaut was co-author of the article, along with Walter A. Ewing.
The Immigration Police Center URLs have been changed. The open letter cited above is now at:
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/index.php?content=sr200702a
The report is now at:
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/index.php?content=sr20070221
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