The LA2050 Report

Not only do some Americans believe that immigrants take jobs away from Americans, but they also believe that immigrants bring crime to America. President Donald Trump has made numerous remarks about immigration and crime, suggesting that the two are linked. However when the amount of immigrants living in America, both documented and undocumented, increased sharply between the years of 1990 and 2010, the United States violent crime rate plummeted by 45% and the property crime rate declined by

Illegal immigrants have been a hot topic lately due to the popularity of this topic amongst the Republican Presidential Nominees, especially Donald Trump. These illegal immigrants bring various things to this country when they come. Some things are positive, such as a family simply seeking to find a better life, while some things are harmful to the United States, such as the amount of crime among illegal immigrants. In July 2015, the most recent estimate of illegal immigrants was 11.2 million. This same data shoes that 56 percent of all deportations last year were convicted criminals, which accounted for 177,960 individuals (Shoichet, 2015). Crime among illegal immigrants is a problem, and sanctuary cities, which are supposed to be a solution, may be making this problem worse.

Immigration is one of the central themes of the founding of the United States and as such it is often the epicenter of controversy among both citizens and policymakers. Throughout the twentieth century, American citizens and policymakers have brought to the forefront the importance of immigration and the role immigrants play within society. This can be a cause of friction between immigrants and multi-generational citizens because immigrants are often viewed with a negative connotation. They are often blamed for stealing jobs from hardworking citizens, draining the healthcare system and adding to the homeless population. They are associated with crime, poverty and in general they are perceived as undesirable members of society (Spenkuch, 2014). The relationship between crime and immigrants is of particular importance because there is a common perception that immigrants cause crime and their neighborhoods are riddled with criminal activity. Also important to note is that the characteristics of immigrants tend to coincide with members of the native-born population that are disproportionally incarceration. In general, they are poorly educated, earn low wages and are young, males. This led to the perception that incoming immigrants continuously add to the lower class, criminal population. In order to clearly understand the relationship between the two concepts they must be examined both from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint

There have been periods of low crime rates in the 21st century. Crime control was greatly affected by the recession as county and city funding took blow after blow. The most dangerous city in the Bay Area is Oakland,“The city recorded nearly 17 violent crimes per 1,000 residents last year, far outpacing other places in the Bay Area. The city had 80 homicides, 3,140 assaults, 3,481 robberies and 209 rapes - ranking No. 3 nationally in violent crime per capita behind only Detroit and Memphis” (Sernoffsky). All over the Bay Area, city leaders are trying to increase there police ranks to historic numbers. Violent crime in Oakland is high in the Eastern and Western Oakland neighborhoods. Even though Oakland has high crime rates, the rate of police officers have

The city of Stockton had a crime rate of 695 crimes per 10,000 residents. PBS Newshour states, “One thing builds upon another. The poor financial situation has forced the police force to drop by 27 percent recently. And that, of course, has made the already high crime rate go up even more” (PBS Newshour, 2012). Crime has been one of the biggest factors that has affected the health of the community in many ways by causing fear of assault, gang-related violence, and having it as a barrier to using community parks, exercising outdoors, walking to and from school, accessing local food outlets, and using public transportation, (SJC2HAC, pg. 31,

The author focuses on Hispanic/Latino immigrants and the views on immigrants who commit crime. In this study, the author’s findings come from the public perceptions. The perceptions of the public in local communities, towns, and cities, discriminate due to the increase in Hispanic/Latino immigration. The public’s view in the study were discriminative against Hispanics/Latinos who migrated to the United States. Sohoni found that societies perceptions in surveys propose a great quantity of Americans that consider immigration will indicate abnormal criminality. On the contrary, the author found that immigrant Hispanic/Latino youths were less likely than Hispanic U.S. Americans to participate in crime.

According to the Daily wire, local, state, and federal statistics were sorted through to find that: “‘illegal immigrants are three times as likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5-percent share of the U.S. population would suggest’”(Aaron Bandler, 9 Things You Need To Know About Illegal Immigration And Crime). The data shown isolates the crime rates of the undocumented immigrants compared to an average United States citizen. However, because there are many articles showing contradicting statistics, the fault in that is that the others articles trying to prove that undocumented immigrants do not raise crimes. The fault there is that those reports calculate the average crime rate of the city instead of isolating cases.

In 1992 the city of Los Angeles was one of our nation’s largest cities. It had an estimated population of over 9 million.1 The city had been in a deteriorating state for several years. There also had been tension growing between the citizens and the police for nearly the last 30 years. This had a lot to do with riots that occurred in Los Angeles back in the 1960’s.2

Nevertheless, it is not only imperative to outline that between 2009 and 2014 the number of illegal immigrants decreased in Kansas, Georgia, Alabama, Illinois, South Carolina, California as well as Nevada, but also vital to note that these reductions are alleged to the reduced number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants. As opposed to the small number (41 percent) of immigrants who had lived in America for more than ten years in the US by 2005, the figure had risen significantly to a wobbling 66 percent by 2014. Nevertheless, those who have lived in the country illegally for less than five years are declining in number steadily, having been estimated at barely 14 percent in 2014 (Krogstad and Passel 17). While the illegal immigrants could be considered as both credible and dependable because of the benefits they bring to the US, on the contrary, it is critical to comprehend the unintended consequences that translate into tangible problems like increased competition for the limited unskilled job opportunities, increased pressure on the economy by using free social services including healthcare, social security, and education as well as the growing crime rate perpetuated by unauthorized citizens in the

Lee, Matthew T. (2003). Crime on the Border: Immigration and Homicide in Urban Communities. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing.

According to several studies, there is no correlation present between the immigrants and the cities they live in. One graph shows the most dangerous cities in the United States based on violent crimes committed per 100,000 residents. It says that Detroit, Michigan is the most violent city with 2,123 violent crimes per 100,000 residents and St.Louis, Missouri in third place with 1,777 violent crimes per 100,000 residents ("The 10 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities"). Another table shows the list and percentages of the metropolitans with the highest amount of foreign borns in their population. Miami has the largest share of immigrants at 38.5% and San Jose is a close runner up with 36.8% foreign born residents. (Florida). Comparing the two data, the cities from the dangerous city graph were absent in the high foreign born table. In fact, another table, which showed the metropolitans with the least foreign born born populations, included the names of four cities from the violent crime graph e.g. St.Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee. With the clear absence of the dangerous city names, no relationship is shown between crime rates and immigrants. Not only that, but these foreigners do not have much incentive to commit crimes. A study shows that “first-generation immigrants [are] 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans"

According to Malia Zimmerman of Fox News, after an extensive study on crime rates and illegal immigrants, it was found that the 11.7 million illegal immigrants living in the US account for a total of 13.6% of all crime committed (Zimmerman). 13.6% may seem to be a small amount of crime, but it is not small when only 11.6 million of America’s 318.9 million person population are committing it. Additionally, approximately 12% of murder cases and 20% of kidnapping cases are committed by Illegal immigrants (Zimmerman). Another example of crime with illegal immigrants is in 2014 when the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) released 30,558 criminals back onto US streets. That group of 30,558 people had a total combined 79,059 criminal convictions, including 186 kidnappings and 86 homicides

Although events such as San Bernardino in 2015 provide anecdotal evidence of immigrants committing acts of extreme violence, these events are extremely rare. Nonetheless, tragedies such as these inevitably grab headlines and capture the attention of millions of Americans across the country. Tragedies such as the attack in San Bernardino hold strong emotional appeal to proponents for restrictive immigration policy. However, these rare and uncontrollable events should not provide the base of logic for America’s national immigration policy as they are not a proxy for immigrant behavior as a whole. Various statistics regarding crime among immigrants may reveal an underlying reason for lower crime rates, which is that the majority of immigrants understand the implications of committing a crime and know that it would not be in their best interest as a new member of the country they wish to call home. Natives, moreover, have crime rates five times that of immigrants. This demonstrates the potential positive externalities that immigrants contribute to the social sphere by lowering the crime rate and acting as models within urban America.

It is proven that immigrants are far more afraid and less likely to as well participate in any crime involved activities, quit their jobs, shoplift, hurt others in any way, shape or form, or do something that could get them arrested. It’s the sense of fear they have for getting deported, but it may also be that good spirit in which they truly came here to start a better life with no problems. Many comparisons between cities, communities and counties are done by economists to differentiate the links of local concentration of immigrants and the rates of crime and violence in that specified area. Results showed that the higher number concentration of immigrants, the lower crime rate. There is no proven connection found between immigrants and higher crime

The thought of arriving immigrants in any host country has been accompanied by reactions of exclusion, and continues to expand throughout the years. During any social illness, immigrants tend to be the first to be held responsible by their recipient societies. Most crimes are associated with immigrants due to the fact that they may not posses the same socio-economics status as natives. Another contributing factor is the media that conducts numerous stories that highlight the image of immigrant crimes to recall the alleged difference between native and foreign born. Undoubtedly, the correlation between immigration and crime has become one of the most controversial discussions in current society. As we enter a new era, immigrants will have