The study found that undocumented immigrants had substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. In addition, the proportion of arrests involving undocumented immigrants in Texas was relatively stable or decreasing over this period.
Using data over 18 years, the study examines crime rates in Arizona before and after the passage of SB 1070. The study finds that SB 1070 was associated with an increase in the violent crime rate of around 20 percent, after controlling for other relevant factors. This effect may be driven by asking police to enforce more rules without increasing the resources available to them or by shifting their focus towards immigration law violations and away from other crimes.
The study suggests that SB 1070 shifted law enforcement’s focus away from violent crimes and towards immigration-related offenses. These and other similar findings are important because Arizona’s SB 1070 has been used as a model for other states. As policymakers continue to debate the role of state and local enforcement in immigration law, early experiments serve as a guide for future rulemaking.
Our review provides little evidence to suggest that immigration increases the prevalence of violence. For this reason, policies aimed to enhance public safety by reducing immigration are unlikely to deliver on their crime reduction promises.
First of all, the undocumented have MUCH more to fear from any interaction with the criminal justice system. And so are much more likely to keep their heads low.
Secondly, the undocumented tend to be harder working. It is a LOT of work to get here illegally and the main reason why most undocumented immigrants come is for work. Hard-working people tend not to commit crime. That is something the lazy generally do, who aren't interested in working hard.
That is not to say that there aren't exceptions. Of course there are exceptions to every generalization. Especially when we are talking about large numbers. But this is a discussion of crime RATES not one-off anecdotes that don't fit the overall trend.
0 x
A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2023 2:00 pm
Bootstrap, are you comfortable and confident with drawing conclusions using the arrest rate for crime as a proxy for the amount of crime committed?
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2023 2:00 pm
Bootstrap, are you comfortable and confident with drawing conclusions using the arrest rate for crime as a proxy for the amount of crime committed?
If you want to know who is committing crimes, I think you need a measure that identifies the people who are committing crimes. That's what the Texas study did.
But I pointed to studies that measure a variety of things. For instance, if you aggressively deport immigrants who commit crimes, how much does that affect crime rates? Not much.
Treyger, Chaflin, and Loeffler created a dataset based on the city-month for the years 2008 and 2011. Miles and Cox used a longer time frame to better account for crime trends before and after S-Comm, analyzing crime rates at the county-month level from 2004 to 2012. Despite these differences, both analyses reach remarkably similar conclusions: S-Comm had no observable effect on violent crime, or as Treyger, Chalifn, and Loeffler put it, 'Secure Communities has had no unambiguous beneficial effects.'
These findings have direct relevance to the underlying question regarding immigration and crime that motivates programs such as S-Comm. As Rosenfeld notes, 'f undocumented immigrants threaten public safety, then communities from which more undocumented immigrants have been removed should experience lower crime rates.' By implication, the fact that this does not appear to be the case offers suggestive evidence that undocumented immigration does not increase criminal violence.
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2023 2:00 pm
Bootstrap, are you comfortable and confident with drawing conclusions using the arrest rate for crime as a proxy for the amount of crime committed?
If you want to know who is committing crimes, I think you need a measure that identifies the people who are committing crimes. That's what the Texas study did.
But I pointed to studies that measure a variety of things. For instance, if you aggressively deport immigrants who commit crimes, how much does that affect crime rates? Not much.
Treyger, Chaflin, and Loeffler created a dataset based on the city-month for the years 2008 and 2011. Miles and Cox used a longer time frame to better account for crime trends before and after S-Comm, analyzing crime rates at the county-month level from 2004 to 2012. Despite these differences, both analyses reach remarkably similar conclusions: S-Comm had no observable effect on violent crime, or as Treyger, Chalifn, and Loeffler put it, 'Secure Communities has had no unambiguous beneficial effects.'
These findings have direct relevance to the underlying question regarding immigration and crime that motivates programs such as S-Comm. As Rosenfeld notes, 'if undocumented immigrants threaten public safety, then communities from which more undocumented immigrants have been removed should experience lower crime rates.' By implication, the fact that this does not appear to be the case offers suggestive evidence that undocumented immigration does not increase criminal violence.
Well, a similar Texas data source used a similar metric to report in 1992 that the crime rate by Black Texans is about 3-1/2 times as high per 100,000 persons compared to White Texans. I think if I would use that metric to argue that Black Texans are more likely to commit crimes than White Texans, I would be admonished that it is any number of factors other than race that is driving the disparity.
It is certainly possible that illegal imigrants commit fewer felonies than legal imigrants, but we may need to also bear in mind that crime against illegal imigrants may be less likely to be reported, and law enforcement might be less motivated to thoroughly investigate, compared with crime against a citizen.
Last edited by ken_sylvania on Sat Oct 21, 2023 9:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2023 2:00 pm
Bootstrap, are you comfortable and confident with drawing conclusions using the arrest rate for crime as a proxy for the amount of crime committed?
Ken, are you?
No, not really.
In some ways, if people want to cherry pick statistics to make their point, it's kind of fun to go find some other statistics that contradict the narrative.
I could point out here as well that it is a crime to unlawfully enter the United States, so if we can accurately assume that an undocumented immigrant (I'm not sure if a person who overstays their visa is considered undocument or not) is also a person who entered the US unlawfully, then the crime rate is really 100%.
