In the United States, many people think that undocumented immigrants are a big crime problem. Former President Donald Trump has used this idea to talk a lot about immigration from the U.S.-Mexico border.
But a new study from Northwestern University gives us a different perspective. Researchers looked at data from the U.S. Census over the last 150 years to compare how often immigrants and U.S.-born people end up in jail.
Better behaved
Surprisingly, immigrants have consistently lower rates of being locked up than those born in the U.S. This trend has been true for a long time, showing that immigrants aren’t as likely to commit crimes as native-born Americans.
What’s more interesting is that since 1960, this gap has only gotten bigger. Nowadays, immigrants are 60% less likely to be in jail compared to people born in the U.S.
These findings challenge the common belief that immigrants are more likely to be criminals. It’s important to base our views and policies on solid evidence, not just assumptions.
“Our study shows that since 1870, it has never been the case that immigrants as a group have been more incarcerated than the U.S.-born,” the researchers explain.
Climbing the ladder
Researchers had previously investigated how well immigrants and their children climb the economic ladder. They discovered that kids of low-income immigrants often move up in society more than children from low-income native families.
Responding to frequent queries about whether immigration affects local crime rates, these researchers delved into U.S. Census data. Their goal was to see if immigrants were more prone to committing crimes than those born in the U.S.
They sifted through Census records from 1870 to the latest in 2020, which includes data from prisons. They wanted to understand the differences in incarceration rates between immigrants and native-born Americans over 150 years.
Their findings were intriguing. While immigrants’ incarceration rates were only slightly lower than those of U.S.-born men over this long period, there’s been a significant shift recently. Today, immigrants are 60% less likely to end up in jail compared to native-born citizens. And relative to white native-born Americans, they’re 30% less likely to be incarcerated.
Behind the trend
The researchers believe that the trend can largely be explained by both the march of globalization and also the skill-based technological changes that came along with it.
“A surprising finding was the extent to which immigrants with lower levels of education today are significantly less likely to commit crimes than their U.S.-born counterparts,” they say. “This may indicate immigrants are more resistant to economic shocks that have affected less-educated men in recent decades.”
As a result, the researchers believe that policymakers should take into account a wide range of factors when they explore immigration, as today the matter is often handled too simplistically.
“The impact of immigration on the economy is a multifaceted topic and crime is just one of the factors,” the authors conclude. “To get a holistic picture, policymakers should also account for research, invention and services that are being provided because of immigrants.
“To the extent you want to make a cost-benefit statement about immigration, you must also look at benefits lost if immigration was reduced.”
