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Immigration And Crime Essay

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Policy makers who are against immigration
Lou Barletta, a former mayor of Hazleton located in Pennsylvania, experienced an influx of Latino immigration in the early 2000’s and in 2006 one of her constituents was murdered by a man who was an illegal immigrant (Itkowitz, 2013). In response, Lou Barletta passed tough laws, which have been tied up in court, to make it a felony crime to hire or rent to undocumented immigrants (Itkowitz, 2013). Similarly, Arizona’s former governor Jan Brewer said she wants to implement tougher and constricting anti-immigration laws because it is necessary for the safety of Arizona residents. In 2010, Jan Brewer told Fox News that “…as governor I have a responsibility to protect the citizens…” and “…we have …show more content…

Sociologists have pointed to second-generation immigrants feeling trapped between their parent’s heritage and the new world of their birth. Bianca Bersani calls it the “dark side of assimilation”, and posited an alternate theory that “…second generation immigrants are catching up with the rest us” (Bersani, 2014). Bersani analyzed crime statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The data represents individuals living in the U.S. in the year 1997 but who were born between 1980 through 1984. Additionally, her survey included important risk factors that researchers say are closely related with criminal involvement. The survey questioned respondents on topics that include number of times they had damaged or destroyed property, committed theft, purposely attacked someone, or sold or acted as a middle man to facilitate a drug deal (Bersani, 2014). Follow up questions incorporated whether the respondents had been victims of crime themselves, and various measures of family attachment as a well as performance in school (Bersani, 2014). Bersani points out that the reason for this study is because just a generation later the crime rate soars. Bersani’s graph illustrates prevalence of each group involved in at least one crime in the

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