Key Findings
- Overall, in areas with high populations of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, there was a lower amount of violence.
- Authorized and unauthorized immigrants independently have negative impacts on criminal violence.
- All but one model showed that in all states, instances of violent victimization, robbery victimization, and assault victimization were shown to decrease when there was an increase in the population of unauthorized immigrants.
Description
In the article, “Does undocumented immigration increase violent crime?”, Michael Light and Ty Miller examined the connection between unauthorized immigration and crime in the United States. Despite increased media and political attention on the correlations between unauthorized immigration and crime, little research has been conducted on the topic. For their study, the researchers collected data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Center for Migration Studies, and the Pew Research Center to identify unauthorized individuals and compare the information with data from the U.S. Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Prisoner Statistics and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The data included representation from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. from 1990 to 2014. The results showed that overall, in areas with high populations of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., there was a lower amount of violence across all models. Additionally, the researchers found that authorized and unauthorized immigrants independently have negative impacts on criminal violence. All but one model showed that in all states, instances of violent victimization, robbery victimization, and assault victimization were shown to decrease when there was an increase in the population of unauthorized immigrants. In conclusion, the authors note that further research on the topic is necessary to understand the differences in state-based crime and unauthorized immigration. The authors’ findings call into question previous notions that unauthorized immigration is correlated with violent crime and recommend that moving forward, immigration policies should consider the fact that immigration does not increase violent crime in the United States.