The myth that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans helps people rationalize their racist attitudes. It gives them a reason to despise immigrant communities. A recent study from the University of California at Davis has explained why deporting undocumented immigrants has no effect on crime rates.
Secure Communities
The deportation program called Secure Communities was built to help prevent crime and to increase the police’s ability to solve crime through collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. But the study has cast doubt on the ability of Secure Communities to do either of those things.
Secure Communities was founded during the George W. Bush administration. President Obama expanded the program during his first term but discontinued it in 2014. It was re-established in 2017 when Donald Trump took office.
The program involved more data-sharing and cooperation between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local police departments. Their ultimate goal was to increase deportations.
Randy Capp, director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute, said:
A large majority of people who are deported through Secure Communities… don’t have convictions for serious crimes.
Capp explains that most of the crimes committed by undocumented people are drunk driving and small-scale drug possession. “Deportations of people who actually have been convicted of much more serious crimes are a really small share of the total.” This shows that the program “doesn’t have that great an impact on overall crime.”
The Study
The study based its information on more than a thousand communities that adopted the program, comparing the crime rates before and after its inception. Some communities had few or no deportations while others deported up to half a percent of the local population. The researchers found a consistent outcome: places that deported the most immigrants appeared no safer than those that deported the fewest. They also saw no effect of deportations on both violent or property crime.
If deportation were an effective crime-prevention method, places that deported the most would prevail in larger decreases in crime than other areas. Although, no trends like this were observed.
Immigrants
Prior research has shown that Americans are afraid of immigrants because they think immigrants are a threat to their safety. However, they are misguided. Research after research has shown that being foreign-born has no association with crime overall.
A study by Alex Nowresh from the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute found that undocumented immigrants in Texas committed significantly fewer crimes than native-born Americans.
Nowresh looked at incarceration rates in Texas and discovered that in 2015, the rate of convictions per 100,000 undocumented immigrants was 16% lower than that of the native-born. It also showed that undocumented people were 56% less likely to be convicted of homicide than a native-born American in Texas.
Accepting Society
In conclusion, the study confirms that the whole idea of immigrants committing more crimes than local-born Americans is a myth. If all Americans could realize that immigrants aren’t a criminal threat, it would help create the accepting society we all deserve.
