Undocumented immigrants far less likely to commit crimes in U.S. than citizens
news.wisc.edu
news.wisc.edu
In general being in a country without valid papers gives one a strong incentive to avoid getting arrested.
https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/10306/silence-of-the-inn...
Per the study, crime among an illegal immigrant population fell post-amnesty in repose to increased crime reporting. Conversely, this implies that when members of a community report crime less often as a result of their immigration status - which the study finds to be the case - crime in those communities is higher than it would be otherwise.
I do not mention this because I am against this measure (I am not), but because it makes this survey impossible to conduct accurately.
That doesn’t hold - there could be more police near a group of people who commit the same number of crimes but because there are more police resources, there would be more arrests. There are lots of reasons this doesn’t hold.
>> saying they're less likely to commit crimes is a speculative inference
It is also undisputed though. We’ve always known illegal immigrants avoid making the kind of trouble that risks run ins with the law (i.e. there are far fewer “safe” crimes for them to commit) because the penalties are deportation.
There are indeed many factors which would cause the arrest rate to not track the crime rate. Which is why treating the arrest rate as being equivalent to the crime rate is specious.
For genpop, yes, for the specific group of illegal immigrants, no - that subset of the population has far higher penalties and penalties influence behaviour.
I think what's more likely is that a) because of the harsh collateral consequences which includes all of the existing collateral consequences of a conviction plus removal, in communities with large numbers of immigrants without valid status, members of the community may be less likely to call the police to report crimes to begin with. The undocumented or mixed-status community's hesitation to call the police is pretty well-documented, although that is unlikely to explain the entire difference documented here; or b) there's a self-selection bias where many of those prone to commit violent felonies may not find it worthwhile to go through the trouble of crossing and attempting to establish themselves under the radar here only to get caught up in a system that's punitive and would lead to removal regardless, considering that migrants seldom move here for reasons other than work opportunities anyway. But again, because of how byzantine our legal system is and how even more kafkaesque our immigration system is, it's unlikely that those without law degrees who specialize in these areas truly have anything close to full knowledge of what the consequences truly look at, so I don't think that adequately explain the difference either. Perhaps more studies on those aspects should be conducted, although this study is more or less in line with thinktank and advocacy group-conducted research from the likes of Cato and the ACLU, whose ideologically leanings are not exactly overlapping on most issues.
Seems like common sense to me.
https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/10306/silence-of-the-inn...
Since most victims of violent crime know their attacker [0], this may imply an under-reporting of crime committed by members of the undocumented community as well.
[0] https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/08/06/americans-most...
>But at least two independent studies suggest Secure Communities didn’t have any effect on crime rates, according to Light, despite deporting more than 200,000 people in its first four years.
>“If the plan was to make communities safer, to reduce the likelihood of, say, a felony violent assault in these communities through deportation, it did not deliver on that promise,” Light says
would seem to contradict
>“They have a tremendous incentive to avoid criminal wrongdoing. The greatest fear among undocumented immigrants is getting in legal trouble that leads to deportation,” says Light
That incentive exists because the law is enforced. If the law were not enforced, the incentive would disappear and crime would increase. QED the Secure Communities program prevents crime.
Am I missing something?
Secure communities was piloted in 2008, and by 2011 appearantly still wasn't in effect in most communities [2]. Thus it seems that the low crime rate found in these studies PREDATES the secure communities program. Which would make it a tough on crime program targeting a low crime population, which would make it arbitrary and inefficient.
[1] https://news.wisc.edu/study-shows-undocumented-immigration-d...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Communities#History
A couple of points.
There is a portion of illegal aliens in the US who do commit within gang and narcotic cartels violence homicide rape is overrepresented
I do believe that it is a small minority but a very prolific one. As we can see across the border as well.
In fact, a lot of illegal immigrants come to the US due to the level of violence from these groups.
Then a lot of illegal aliens are deported instead of jailed.
Lastly taking the study as reported in the Linked to Article as fact, I don't think the point it makes sense.
If 100 native-born men commit five rape, each and 109 illegal alien men only commit two rapes each that still means 200 rapes extra in addition to those that would happen if the illegal aliens were not in the US. To tell the victim that illegal immigrants commit far less crime will probably not help much.
I am a legal immigrant myself. I came from the US. I think the US should make immigration in some form more straightforward to obtain legally.
I also think it is the responsibility of the US to accept their for share of desperate refugees that is a direct result of our military interventions as well as our occupations.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/01/2014704117#sec...
How about the fact all those people are already criminals?
How about illegal immigrants are more likely to target other immigrants and go unpunished?
How do they even know how many illegal immigrants there are in the US, what number they're feeding into?
""" “There’s lots of opportunity to commit crimes in Mexico and Venezuela and other places people are emigrating from,” Light says. “The argument is that many people who want to immigrate are selected on attributes like ambition to achieve, to find economic opportunities, and those types of things aren’t very highly correlated with having a criminal propensity.” """
They are drawing conclusions while I think their findings are highly questionable. It's ultimately just an opinion piece.