Immigration and crime refers to perceived or actual relationships between crime and immigration.
The academic literature provides mixed findings for the relationship
between immigration and crime worldwide, but finds for the United States
that immigration either has no impact on the crime rate or that it
reduces the crime rate.
A meta-analysis of 51 studies from 1994–2014 on the relationship
between immigration and crime in different countries found that overall
immigration reduces crime, but the relationship is very weak. Research suggests that people tend to overestimate the relationship between immigration and criminality.
The over-representation of immigrants in the criminal justice
systems of several countries may be due to socioeconomic factors,
imprisonment for migration offenses, and racial and ethnic
discrimination by police and the judicial system.
The relationship between immigration and terrorism is understudied, but
existing research suggests that the relationship is weak and that
repression of the immigrants increases the terror risk.
Worldwide
Much
of the empirical research on the causal relationship between
immigration and crime has been limited due to weak instruments for
determining causality.
According to one economist writing in 2014, "while there have been many
papers that document various correlations between immigrants and crime
for a range of countries and time periods, most do not seriously address
the issue of causality."
The problem with causality primarily revolves around the location of
immigrants being endogenous, which means that immigrants tend to
disproportionately locate in deprived areas where crime is higher
(because they cannot afford to stay in more expensive areas) or because
they tend to locate in areas where there is a large population of
residents of the same ethnic background. A burgeoning literature relying on strong instruments provides mixed findings.
As one economist describes the existing literature in 2014, "most
research for the US indicates that if any, this association is
negative... while the results for Europe are mixed for property crime
but no association is found for violent crime".
Another economist writing in 2014, describes how "the evidence, based
on empirical studies of many countries, indicates that there is no
simple link between immigration and crime, but legalizing the status of
immigrants has beneficial effects on crime rates."
A 2009 review of the literature focusing on recent, high-quality
studies from the United States found that immigration generally did not
increase crime and often decreased it.
The relationship between crime and the legal status of immigrants remains understudied
but studies on amnesty programs in the United States and Italy suggest
that legal status can largely explain the differences in crime between
legal and illegal immigrants, most likely because legal status leads to
greater job market opportunities for the immigrants. However, one study finds that the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 led to an increase in crime among previously undocumented immigrants.
Existing research suggests that labor market opportunities have a significant impact on immigrant crime rates. Young, male and poorly educated immigrants have the highest individual probabilities of imprisonment among immigrants.
Research suggests that the allocation of immigrants to high crime
neighborhoods increases individual immigrant crime propensity later in
life, due to social interaction with criminals.
Some factors may effect the reliability of data on suspect rates,
crime rates, conviction rates and prison populations for drawing
conclusions about immigrants’ overall involvement in criminal activity:
- Police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by immigrants or in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of immigrants among crime suspects.
- Possible discrimination by the judicial system may result in higher number of convictions.
- Unfavorable bail and sentencing decisions due to foreigners’ ease of flight, lack of domiciles, lack of regular employment and lack of family able to host the individual can explain immigrants’ higher incarceration rates when compared to their share of convictions relative to the native population.
- Natives may be more likely to report crimes when they believe the offender has an immigrant background.
- Imprisonment for migration offenses, which are more common among immigrants, need to be taken account of for meaningful comparisons between overall immigrant and native criminal involvement.
- Foreigners imprisoned for drug offenses may not actually live in the country where they are serving sentences but were arrested while in transit.
- Crimes by short-term migrants, such as tourists, exchange students and transient workers, are counted as crimes by immigrants or foreigners, and gives the impression that a higher share of the migrant population commits crimes (as these short-term migrants are not counted among the foreign-born population).
Terrorism
The
relationship between immigration and terrorism remains understudied. A
2016 study finds that a higher level of migration is associated with a
lower level of terrorism in the host country, but that migrants from
terror-prone states do increase the risk of terrorism in the host
country.
The authors note though that "only a minority of migrants from
high-terrorism states can be associated with increases in terrorism, and
not necessarily in a direct way."
In 2018, Washington and Lee University law professor Nora V. Demleitner
wrote that there is "mixed evidence" as to a relationship between
immigration and terrorism.
A paper by a group of German political scientists and economists,
covering 1980–2010, found that there were more terrorist attacks in
countries with a larger number of foreigners, but that, on average, the
foreigners were not more likely to become terrorists than the natives. The study also found little evidence that terrorism is systematically imported from predominantly Muslim countries.
The same study found that compared to the average “non-terror-rich”
country, migrants from Algeria, Iran, India, Spain, and Turkey were all
more likely to be involved in a terrorist attack, while migrants from
Angola and Cambodia were less likely than the reference groups to commit
terror.The study found that repression of the migrants increased the
terror risk. A 2019 Cato Institute paper found no evidence of a relationship between immigration and terrorism. These findings held when specifically examining immigration from the Middle-East and North Africa and conflict-torn countries.
According to Olivier Roy in 2017 analyzing the previous two
decades of terrorism in France, the typical jihadist is a
second-generation immigrant or convert who after a period of petty crime
was radicalized in prison.
Georgetown University terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that
repression of minority groups, such as Muslims, makes it easier for
terrorist organizations to recruit from those minority groups. While French scholar Olivier Roy has argued that the burkini bans and secularist policies of France provoked religious violence in France, French scholar Gilles Kepel responded that Britain has no such policies and still suffered several jihadist attacks in 2017.
Asia
Japan
A survey of existing research on immigration and crime in Japan found
that "prosecution and sentencing in Japan do seem to result in some
disparities by nationality, but the available data are too limited to
arrive at confident conclusions about their nature or magnitude".
According to a 1997 news report, a large portion of crimes by
immigrants are by Chinese in Japan, and some highly publicized crimes by
organized groups of Chinese (often with help of Japanese organized crime) have led to a negative public perception of immigrants.
Malaysia
A 2017 study found that immigration to Malaysia decreases property crime rates and violent crime rates. In the case of property crime rates, this is in part because immigrants improve economic conditions for natives.
Europe
A 2015 study found that the increase in immigration flows into
western European countries that took place in the 2000s did "not affect
crime victimization, but it is associated with an increase in the fear
of crime, the latter being consistently and positively correlated with
the natives’ unfavourable attitude toward immigrants."
In a survey of the existing economic literature on immigration and
crime, one economist describes the existing literature in 2014 as
showing that "the results for Europe are mixed for property crime but no
association is found for violent crime".
Denmark
Immigrants
(blue) and descendants of immigrants (red). Countries are listed in
order according to "blue" values. Example: Index 125 means a man from
country X was 25% to be convicted of a crime. Yugoslavia means male
immigrants born in that country before it was split up. Source Statistics Denmark
A report by Statistics Denmark
released in December 2015 found that 83% of crimes are committed by
individuals of Danish origin (88% of the total population), 3% by those
of non-Danish Western descent and 14% by individuals of non-Western
descent.
Male Lebanese immigrants and their descendants, a big part of them being of Palestinian descent,
have, at 257, the highest crime-index among the studied groups, which
translates to crime rates 150% higher than the country's average. The
index is standardized by both age and socioeconomic status. Men of
Yugoslav origin and men originating in Turkey, Pakistan, Somalia and
Morocco are associated with high crime-indexes, ranging between 187 and
205, which translate to crime rates about double the country's average.
The lowest crime index is recorded among immigrants and descendants
originating from the United States. Their crime-index, at 32, is far
below the average for all men in Denmark. Among immigrants from China a very small crime-index is recorded as well, at 38.
A 2014 study of the random dispersal of refugee immigrants over
the period 1986–1998, and focusing on the immigrant children who
underwent this random assignment before the age of 15, suggests that
exposure to neighbourhood crime increases individual crime propensity.
The share of convicted criminals living in the assignment neighborhood
at assignment affects later crime convictions of males, but not of
females, who were assigned to these neighborhoods as children.
The authors "find that a one standard deviation increase in the share
of youth criminals living in the assignment neighborhood, and who
committed a crime in the assignment year, increases the probability of a
conviction for male assignees by between 5 percent and 9 percent later
in life (when they are between 15 and 21 years old)."
One study of Denmark found that providing immigrants with voting rights reduced their crime rate.
At 4%, male migrants aged 15–64 with non-Western backgrounds had twice the conviction rate against the Danish Penal Code
in 2018, compared to 2% for Danish men. In a given year, about 13% of
all male descendants of non-Western migrants aged 17–24 are convicted
against the penal code.
In November 2018, the government announced plans to house failed
asylum claimants, criminal foreigners who could not be deported and foreign fighters in the Islamic State on Lindholm (Stege Bugt), an island no permanent residents. The scheme was approved by Danish parliament 19 December 2018. The plan was opposed by council leaders in Vordingsborg municipality and merchants in Kalvehave, where the ferry to Lindholm has its port.
Finland
Immigrant crime in Finland became a topic of public debate in the 1990s-early 21st century period with the arrivals of Somalis in Finland.
A 2015 study found that immigrant youth had higher incidence rates in
14 out of 17 delinquent acts. The gap is small for thefts and
vandalism, and no significant differences for shoplifting, bullying and
use of intoxicants. According to the authors, "weak parental social
control and risk routines, such as staying out late, appear to partly
explain the immigrant youths’ higher delinquency", and "the relevance of
socioeconomic factors was modest".
According to the American Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Estonians and Romanians were the two largest group of foreigners in Finnish prisons.
According to 2014 official statistics, 24% of rapes are estimated
to have been committed by individuals with foreign surnames in Finland.
For some context, foreign-language speakers and the foreign-born
comprised roughly 6% of the Finnish population in 2014, meaning that the
percentage of individuals with foreign surnames in Finland is at very
least 6%.
There are great differences in representation between nationalities of
rapists: while in 1998 there were no rapists hailing from Vietnam or
China, there were many from other countries; 10 times more
"foreign-looking" men were accused of rape than the overall percentage
of foreigners in Finland.
In 2016, in a report authored by the Police school and the
Immigration Service (Migri), 131 Finnish citizens were subjected to
sexual assault by asylum migrants of which 8 out of 10 were committed
against Finnish women. The victim was under 18 in almost half of the sexual assaults against women.
Iraqis made up 2/3 of the suspects and all the suspects were born in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Iran, Bangladesh, Somalia or Syria.
The investigation also analysed the number of suspects with respect to
background. It was found that every fifth Algerian asylum seeker had
been suspected of a crime, 15% of Belorussinans, 13% of the Moroccans
and less than 10% for other nationalities.
France
A 2009 study found "that the share of immigrants in the population
has no significant impact on crime rates once immigrants’ economic
circumstances are controlled for, while finding that unemployed
immigrants tend to commit more crimes than unemployed non-immigrants."
A study by sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, director of studies at the EHESS, found that "Muslims, mostly from North African origin, are becoming the most numerous group in [French prisons]."
His work has been criticized for taking into account only 160 prisoners
in 4 prisons, all close to northern Paris where most immigrants live.
Germany
In February 2019, all states of Germany reported an increase in the share of foreign and stateless inmates in the Prisons in Germany in the preceding 3-5 year period. In Bremen and Hamburg half the inmates were foreigners and a third in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In 2018, the Wall Street Journal
analysed German crime statistics for crime suspects and found that the
foreigners, overall 12.8% of the population, make up a disproportionate
share of crime suspects (34.7%), see horizontal bar chart.
| Number of suspects in organized crime in Germany | |
 | |
| Source: BKA | |
In 2017, as in previous years German citizens constituted the largest
group of suspects in organised crime trials. The fraction of non-German
citizen suspects increased from 67.5% to 70.7% while the fraction of
German citizens decreased correspondingly. For the German citizens,
14.9% had a different citizenship at birth.
| Fraction of sexual offense cases with at least one immigrant suspect | |
 | |
| Bundeskriminalamt and Der Spiegel | |
According to statistics collected by the German Federal Criminal
Police Office (BKA), the number of immigrants suspects of sexual
offenses in Germany has gone up in absolute numbers, while
simultaneously the number of German perpetrators has gone down.
At least one immigrant was identified as a suspect in 3404 sexual
offense cases in 2016, which were twice as many as the previous year.
Published in 2017, the first comprehensive study of the social
effects of the one million refugees going to Germany found that it
caused "very small increases in crime in particular with respect to drug
offenses and fare-dodging." A January 2018 Zurich University of Applied Sciences
study commissioned by the German government attributed over 90% of a
10% overall rise in violent crime from to 2015 to 2016 in Lower Saxony
to refugees. The study's authors noted that there were great differences between different refugee groups. Refugees from North African countries Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco
constituted 0.9% of refugees but represented 17.1% of violent crime
refugee suspects and 31% of robbery refugee suspects. The latter
corresponds to a 35-fold over-representation. Refugees from Afghanistan,
Syria and Iraq represented 54.7% of the total, but represented 16% of
refugee robbery suspects and 34.9% violent crime suspects and were thus
underrepresented.
A report released by the German Federal Office of Criminal
Investigation in November 2015 found that over the period
January–September 2015, the crime rate of refugees was the same as that
of native Germans. According to Deutsche Welle,
the report "concluded that the majority of crimes committed by refugees
(67 percent) consisted of theft, robbery and fraud. Sex crimes made for
less than 1 percent of all crimes committed by refugees, while homicide
registered the smallest fraction at 0.1 percent." According to the conservative newspaper Die Welt's description of the report, the most common crime committed by refugees was not paying fares on public transportation.
According to Deutsche Welle's reporting in February 2016 of a report by
the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, the number of
crimes committed by refugees did not rise in proportion to the number of
refugees between 2014–2015.
According to Deutsche Welle, "between 2014 and 2015, the number of
crimes committed by refugees increased by 79 percent. Over the same
period the number of refugees in Germany increased by 440 percent."
The U.S. fact-checker Politifact noted that Germany's crime data suggests that the crime rate of the average refugee is lower than that of the average German.
In April 2017, the crime figures released for 2016 showed that the
number of suspected crimes by refugees, asylum-seekers and illegal
immigrants increased by 50 percent.
The figures showed that most of the suspected crimes were by repeat
offenders, and that 1 percent of migrants accounted for 40 percent of
total migrant crimes.
From 2016 to 2017, the number of crimes committed by foreigners in Germany decreased from 950000 to 700000, a 23% reduction. The reduction was largely due to fewer illegal immigrants arriving or remaining in the country.
A 2017 study in the European Economic Review
found that the German government's policy of immigration of more than 3
million people of German descent to Germany after the collapse of the
Soviet Union led to a significant increase in crime. The effects were strongest in regions with high unemployment, high preexisting crime levels or large shares of foreigners.
According to a 2017 study in the European Journal of Criminology,
the crime rate was higher among immigrant youths than native youths
during the 1990s and 2000s but most of the difference could be explained
by socioeconomic factors.
The different crime rates narrowed in the last ten years; the study
speculates that "a new citizenship law finally granting German-born
descendants of guest workers German citizenship, as well as increased
integration efforts (particularly in schools) and a stronger disapproval
of violence" may have contributed to this narrowing.
DW
reported in 2006 that in Berlin, young male immigrants are three times
more likely to commit violent crimes than their German peers. Hans-Jörg
Albrecht, director of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and
International Criminal law in Freiburg, stated that the "one over-riding
factor in youth crime [was] peer group pressure." Whereas the Gastarbeiter
in the 50s and 60s did not have an elevated crime rate, second- and
third-generation of immigrants had significantly higher crime rates.
Greece
Illegal immigration to Greece has increased rapidly over the past
several years. Tough immigration policies in Spain and Italy and
agreements with their neighboring African countries to combat illegal
immigration have changed the direction of African immigration flows
toward Greece. At the same time, flows from Asia and the Middle
East—mainly Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bangladesh—to Greece appear
to have increased as well. By 2012 it was estimated that more than 1 million illegal immigrants entered Greece.
The evidence now indicates that nearly all illegal immigration to the
European Union flows through the country's porous borders. In 2010, 90
percent of all apprehensions for unauthorized entry into the European
Union took place in Greece, compared to 75 percent in 2009 and 50
percent in 2008.
In 2010, 132,524 persons were arrested for "illegal entry or
stay" in Greece, a sharp increase from 95,239 in 2006. Nearly half of
those arrested (52,469) were immediately deported, the majority of them
being Albanians. Official statistics show that immigrants are responsible for about half of the criminal activity in Greece.
Ireland
Foreigners are under-represented in the Irish prison population, according to 2010 figures.
Italy
According to the ISPI, the Italian prison population in 2018 counted 59655 and of those 34% were foreigners, with the largest groups coming from Morocco (3751), Albania (2568), Romania (2561), Tunisia (2070) and Nigeria (1453).
A study of immigration to Italy
during the period 1990–2003 found that "immigration increases only the
incidence of robberies, while leaving unaffected all other types of
crime. Since robberies represent a very minor fraction of all criminal
offenses, the effect on the overall crime rate is not significantly
different from zero." Over the period 2007-2016, the crime rate among foreigners decreased by around 65%.
A study of Italy before and after the January 2007 European Union
enlargement found that giving legal status to the previously illegal
immigrants from the new EU members states led to a "50 percent reduction
in recidivism".
The authors find that "legal status... explains one-half to two-thirds
of the observed differences in crime rates between legal and illegal
immigrants".
A study on the 2007 so-called "click day" amnesty for undocumented
immigrants in Italy found that the amnesty reduced the immigrant crime
rate.
The authors estimate "that a ten percent increase in the share of
immigrants legalized in one region would imply a 0.3 percent reduction
in immigrants’ criminal charges in the following year in that same
region". Research shows that stricter enforcement of migration policy leads to a reduction in the crime rate of undocumented migrants.
According to the latest report by Idos/Unar, immigrants made up
32,6% of prison population in 2015 (four percentage points less than
five years before), immigrants making up 8,2% of population in 2015.
Prison population data may not give a reliable picture of immigrants'
involvement in criminal activity due to different bail and sentencing
decisions for foreigners.
Foreigners are, for instance, far more overrepresented in the prison
population than their share of convictions relative to the native
population. According to a 2013 study, the majority of foreign prisoners are held in connection with a drug offence. One out of every nine offences ascribed to foreign prisoners concerns violation of ‘laws governing foreigners’.
The 2013 study cites literature that points to discriminatory practices
against foreigners by Italian law enforcement, judiciary and penal
system.
According to a 2013 report, "undocumented immigrants are
responsible for the vast majority of crimes committed in Italy by
immigrants... the share of undocumented immigrants varies between 60 and
70 percent for violent crimes, and it increases to 70–85 for property
crime. In 2009, the highest shares are in burglary (85), car theft (78),
theft (76), robbery (75), assaulting public officer / resisting arrest
(75), handling stolen goods (73)."
The 2013 report notes that "immigrants accounted for almost 23
percent of the criminal charges although they represented only 6‐7
percent of the resident population" in 2010.
According to 2007 data, the crime rate of legal immigrants was
1.2–1.4% whereas the crime rate was 0.8% for native Italians. The
overrepresentation is partly due to the large number of young legal
immigrants, the crime rate is 1.9% for legal immigrants aged 18–44
whereas it is 1.5% for their Italian peers; 0.4% for legal immigrants
aged 45–64 years whereas it is 0.7% for their Italian peers; and for
those over 65 years old, the crime rates is the same among natives and
foreigners. 16.9% of crimes committed by legal immigrants aged 18–44 are
linked to violations of immigration laws. By excluding those crimes,
the crime rate of legal immigrants aged 18–44 is largely the same as
that of same aged Italians.
Netherlands
Non-native Dutch youths, especially young Antillean and Surinamese
Rotterdammers, commit more crimes than the average. More than half of Moroccan-Dutch
male youths aged 18 to 24 years in Rotterdam have ever been
investigated by the police, as compared to close to a quarter of native
male youths. Eighteen percent of foreign-born young people aged from 18
to 24 have been investigated for crimes.
According to a 2009 report commissioned by Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin,
63% of the 447 teenagers convicted of serious crime are children of
parents born outside the Netherlands. All these cases concern crime for
which the maximum jail sentence is longer than eight years, such as
robbery with violence, extortion, arson, public acts of violence, sexual
assault, manslaughter and murder. The ethnic composition of the
perpetrators was: native Dutch – 37%; Moroccans – 14%; Unknown origin –
14%; "other non-Westerners" – 9%; Turkish – 8%; Surinamese – 7%;
Antillean – 7%; and "other Westerners" – 4%.
In the majority of cases, the judges did not consider the serious
offences to be grave enough to necessitate an unconditional jail
sentence.
Analysis of police data for 2002 by ethnicity showed that 37.5
percent of all crime suspects living in the Netherlands were of foreign
origin (including those of the second generation), almost twice as high
as the share of immigrants in the Dutch population. The highest rates
per capita were found among first and second generation male migrants of
a non‐Western background. Of native male youths between the ages of 18
and 24, in 2002 2.2% were arrested, of all immigrant males of the same
age 4.4%, of second generation non-Western males 6.4%. The crime rates
for so‐called ‘Western migrants’ were very close to those of the native
Dutch. In all groups, the rates for women were considerably lower than
for men, lower than one percent, with the highest found among second
generation non‐western migrants, 0.9% (Blom et al. 2005: 31).
For Moroccan immigrants, whether they originate from the
underdeveloped parts of Morocco has a modest impact on their crime rate.
One study finds that "crime rates in the Netherlands are higher among
Moroccans who come from the countryside and the Rif,
or whose parents do, than among those who come from the urban provinces
in Morocco and from outside the Rif, or whose parents do."
In 2015, individuals with a Moroccan background were, not taking their
age into account, almost six times as likely to be suspected for a crime
compared to the native Dutch. Of the first generation 2.52% was
suspected of a crime, of the second generation 7.36%, of males 7.78% and
women 1.34%.
Using 2015 data, Statistics Netherlands
concluded that non-Western male immigrant youths had been relatively
often suspected of a crime: 5.42% in the group aged between 18 and 24,
compared with 1.92% for native Dutch of the same age. For both male and
female non-Western immigrants of all ages combined the numbers were 2.4%
for the first generation and 4.54% for the second. The absolute crime
rate had dropped by almost a half since the early twenty-first century,
for both native Dutch and non-western immigrants.
In 2017, a study concluded that asylum seekers in the Netherlands were
less criminal than native Dutch with the same combination of age, gender
and socio-economic position.
Norway
Bar
chart showing number of perpetrators aged 15 and older per 1000
residents per foreign-born population for the years 2010-2013, according
to Statistics Norway. The total number of perpetrators in the 2010-2013 period with Norwegian background was 154326 and 27985 with immigration background.
A 2011 report by Statistics Norway found that immigrants are
over-represented in crime statistics but that there is substantial
variation by country of origin.
The report furthermore found that "the overrepresentation is
substantially reduced when adjusting for population structure—for some
groups as much as 45 per cent, but there are also some groups where the
over-representation still is large."
According to the report, the data for 2009 shows that first-generation
immigrants from Africa were three times more likely than ethnic
Norwegians (or rather individuals who are neither first- nor
second-generation immigrants) to be convicted of a felony while Somali
immigrants in particular being 4.4 times more likely to be convicted of a
felony than an ethnic Norwegian was. Similarly, Iraqis and Pakistanis
were found to have rates of conviction for felonies greater than ethnic
Norwegians by a factor of 3 and 2.6 respectively. Another finding was
that second-generation African and Asian immigrants had a higher rate of
convictions for felonies than first-generation immigrants. While
first-generation African immigrants had conviction rates for felonies of
16.7 per 1,000 individuals over the age of 15, for second-generation
immigrants the rate was 28 per 1,000—an increase of over 60%. And for
Asian immigrants an increase from 9.3 per 1,000 to 17.1 per 1,000 was
observed. In 2010 13% of sexual crimes charges were filed against first
generation immigrants who make up 7.8% of the population—a rate of
over-representation of 1.7.
In 2010, a spokesperson for the Oslo Police Department stated
that every case of assault rapes in Oslo in the years 2007, 2008 and
2009 was committed by a non-Western immigrant.
When only perpetrators in the solved cases were counted, it was found
that four of the victims in the 16 unsolved cases described the
perpetrator as being of White (not necessarily Norwegian) ethnicity.
A 2011 report by the Oslo Police District shows that of the 131
individuals charged with the 152 rapes in which the perpetrator could be
identified, 45.8% were of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin while
54.2% were of Norwegian, other European or American origin. In the
cases of "assault rape", i.e. rape aggravated by physical violence, a
category that included 6 of the 152 cases and 5 of the 131 identified
individuals, the 5 identified individuals were of African, Middle
Eastern or Asian origin. In the cases of assault rape where the
individual responsible was not identified and the police relied on the
description provided by the victim, 8 of the perpetrators were of
African/dark-skinned appearance, 4 were Western/light/Nordic and 4 had
an Asian appearance.
In 2018, an investigation into court cases involving domestic
violence against children showed that 47% of the cases involved parents
who were both born abroad. According to a researcher at Norwegian Police University College the over-representation was due to cultural (honor culture) and legal differences in Norway and foreign countries.
Spain
A 2008 study finds that the rates of crimes committed by immigrants are substantially higher than nationals.
The study finds that "the arrival of immigrants has resulted in a lack
of progress in the reduction of offences against property and in a minor
increase in the number of offences against Collective Security (i.e.
drugs and trafficking). In the case of nationals, their contribution to
the increase in the crime rate is primarily concentrated in offences
against persons."
By controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors, the gap
between immigrants and natives is reduced but not fully. The authors
also find "that a higher proportions of American, non-UE European, and
African immigrants tend to widen the crime differential, the effect
being larger for the latter ones".
The same paper provides supports for the notion that labour market
conditions impact the relationship between crime and immigration.
Cultural differences were also statistically detected.
This study has been criticized for not using strong instruments for
identifying causality: the "instruments (lagged values of the covariates
and measures of the service share of GDP in a province) are not
convincing in dealing with the endogeneity of migrant location choice."
Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) published a study
that analyzes records in the Register of Convicted in 2008. The data
show that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics: 70% of
all crimes were committed by Spaniards and 30% by foreigners. Foreigners make up 15% of the population.
Switzerland
In Switzerland,
69.7% of the prison population did not have Swiss citizenship, compared
to 22.1% of total resident population (as of 2008).
The figure of arrests by residence status is not usually made public. In
1997, when there were for the first time more foreigners than Swiss
among the convicts under criminal law (out of a fraction of 20.6% of the
total population at the time), a special report was compiled by the Federal Department of Justice and Police
(published in 2001) which for the year 1998 found an arrest rate per
1000 adult population of 2.3 for Swiss citizens, 4.2 for legally
resident aliens and 32 for asylum seekers. 21% of arrests made concerned
individuals with no residence status, who were thus either sans papiers or "crime tourists" without any permanent residence in Switzerland.
A 2016 study found that asylum seekers exposed to conflict during
childhood were far more prone to violent crimes than co-national asylum
seekers who were not exposed to conflict. The conflict exposed cohorts have a higher propensity to target victims from their own nationality. Offering labor market access to the asylum seekers eliminates the entire effect of conflict exposure on crime propensity.
In 2010, a statistic was published which listed delinquency by
nationality (based on 2009 data).
To avoid distortions due to demographic structure, only the male
population aged between 18 and 34 was considered for each group. From
the study, it became clear that crime rate is highly correlated on the
country of origin of the various migrant groups.
Thus, immigrants from Germany, France and Austria had a significantly lower crime rate than Swiss citizens (60% to 80%), while immigrants from Angola, Nigeria and Algeria had a crime rate of above 600% of that of Swiss population.
In between these extremes were immigrants from Former Yugoslavia, with crime rates of between 210% and 300% of the Swiss value.
Sweden
Those with immigrant background are over-represented in Swedish crime
statistics, but research shows that socioeconomic factors, such as
unemployment, poverty, exclusion language, and other skills explain most
of difference in crime rates between immigrants and natives.
Recent immigration to Sweden
Crime and immigration is one of the major themes of the 2018 Swedish general election.
| 2013-2018 birthplace of rapists convicted in Sweden | |
 | |
| Total: 843 Source: Swedish Television | |
In 2018, Swedish Television investigative journalism show Uppdrag Granskning analysed the total of 843 district court
cases from the five preceding years and found that 58% of all convicted
of rape had a foreign background and 40% were born in the Middle East and Africa, with young men from Afghanistan
numbering 45 stood out as being the most next most common country of
birth after Sweden. When only analysing rape assault (Swedish: överfallsvåldtäkt) cases, that is cases where perpetrator and victim were not previously acquainted, 97 out of 129 were born outside Europe.
Viral falsehoods have circulated in recent years that tie immigrants and refugees to an alleged surge of crime in Sweden. According to Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at Stockholm University,
"What we’re hearing is a very, very extreme exaggeration based on a few
isolated events, and the claim that it’s related to immigration is more
or less not true at all."
According to Klara Selin, a sociologist at the National Council for
Crime Prevention, the major reasons why Sweden has a higher rate of rape
than other countries is due to the way in which Sweden documents rape
("if a woman reports being raped multiple times by her husband that’s
recorded as multiple rapes, for instance, not just one report") and a
culture where women are encouraged to report rapes.
Stina Holmberg at the National Council for Crime Prevention, noted that
"there is no basis for drawing the conclusion that crime rates are
soaring in Sweden and that that is related to immigration".
In February 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump asserted that crime was surging in Sweden due to immigration.
According to FactCheck.Org, Trump's claim was an exaggeration and noted
that "experts said there is no evidence of a major crime wave."
According to official statistics, the reported crime rate in Sweden has
risen since 2005 whereas annual government surveys show that the number
of Swedes experiencing crime remain steady since 2005, even as Sweden
has taken in hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees over the
same period.
Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at the University of Stockholm, said
foreign-born residents are twice as likely to be registered for a crime
as native Swedes but that other factors beyond place of birth are at
play, such as education level and poverty, and that similar trends occur
in European countries that have not taken in a lot of immigrants in
recent years.
According to data gathered by Swedish police from October 2015 to
January 2016, 5,000 police calls out of 537,466 involved asylum seekers
and refugees. According to Felipe Estrada, professor of criminology at Stockholm University,
this shows how the media gives disproportionate attention to and
exaggerates the alleged criminal involvement of asylum seekers and
refugees. Henrik Selin, head of the Department for Intercultural Dialogue at the Swedish Institute,
noted that allegations of a surge in immigrant crime after the intake
of more than 160,000 immigrants in 2015 have been “highly exaggerated...
there is nothing to support the claim that the crime rate took off
after the 160,000 came in 2015.” While it’s true that immigrants have
been over-represented among those committing crimes—particularly in some
suburban communities heavily populated by immigrants, he said—the issue
of crime and immigration is complex. Speaking in February 2017, Manne Gerell, a doctoral student in criminology at Malmo University,
noted that while immigrants where disproportionately represented among
crime suspects, many of the victims of immigrant crimes were other
immigrants.
A Swedish Police report from May 2016 found that there have been
123 incidents of sexual molestation in the country's public baths and
pools in 2015 (112 of them were directed against girls). In 55% of
cases, the perpetrator could be reasonably identified. From these
identified perpetrators, 80% were of foreign origin.
The same report found 319 cases of sexual assault on public streets and
parks in 2015. In these cases, only 17 suspected perpetrators have been
identified, 4 of them Swedish nationals with the remainder being of
foreign origin. Another 17 were arrested, but not identified.
In March 2018, newspaper Expressen investigated gang rape
court cases from the two preceding years and found that there were 43
men having been convicted. Their average age was 21 and 13 were under
the age of 18 when the crime was committed. Of the convicted, 40 out of
the 43 were either immigrants (born abroad) or born in Sweden to
immigrant parents.
Another investigation by newspaper Aftonbladet found that of 112 men
and boys convicted for gang rape since July 2012, 82 were born outside
Europe. The median age of the victims was 15, while 7 out of 10
perpetrators were between 15 to 20.
According to professor Christian Diesen, a foreigner may have a lower
threshold to commit sexual assault due to having grown up in a
misogynist culture where all women outside the home are interpreted as
available. Also professor Henrik Tham stated that there was a clear
over-representatation of foreigners and cultural differences, while also
adding that few cultures allow such behaviour. Professor Jerzy Sarnecki instead emphasized socioeconomic factors and that police may be more diligient in investigating crimes by foreigners.
Past immigration to Sweden
A
2014 survey of several studies found that people with foreign
background are, on average, two times more likely to commit crimes than
those born in Sweden. This figure has remained stable since the 1970s,
despite the changes in numbers of immigrants and their country of
origin.
Some studies reporting a link on immigration and crime have been
criticized for not taking into account the population's age, employment
and education level, all of which affect level of crime. In general,
research that takes these factors into account does not support the idea
that there is a link between immigration and crime.
A 2005 study by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention
found that people of foreign background were 2.5 times more likely to
be suspected of crimes than people with a Swedish background, including
immigrants being four times more likely to be suspected of for lethal
violence and robbery, five times more likely to be investigated for sex
crimes, and three times more likely to be investigated for violent
assault.
The report was based on statistics for those "suspected" of offences.
The Council for Crime Prevention said that there was "little difference"
in the statistics for those suspected of crimes and those actually
convicted.
A 2006 government report suggests that immigrants face discrimination
by law enforcement, which could lead to meaningful differences between
those suspected of crimes and those actually convicted.
A 2008 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention
finds evidence of discrimination towards individuals of foreign descent
in the Swedish judicial system. The 2005 report finds that immigrants who entered Sweden during early childhood have lower crime rates than other immigrants.
By taking account of socioeconomic factors (gender, age, education and
income), the crime rate gap between immigrants and natives decreases.
A 2013 study done by Stockholm University
showed that the 2005 study's difference was due to the socioeconomic
differences (e.g. family income, growing up in a poor neighborhood)
between people born in Sweden and those born abroad. The authors furthermore found "that culture is unlikely to be a strong cause of crime among immigrants".
A study published in 1997 attempted to explain the higher than
average crime rates among immigrants to Sweden. It found that between 20
and 25 percent of asylum seekers to Sweden had experienced physical torture, and many suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Other refugees had witnessed a close relative being killed.
The 2005 study reported that persons from North Africa and Western Asia were over-represented in crime statistics,
whereas a 1997 paper additionally found immigrants from Finland, South
America, Arab world and Eastern Europe to be over-represented in crime
statistics. Studies have found that native-born Swedes with high levels of unemployment are also over-represented in crime statistics.
A 1996 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime
Prevention determined that between 1985 and 1989 individuals born in
Iraq, North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia), Africa
(excluding Uganda and the North African countries), other Middle East
(Jordan, Palestine, Syria), Iran and Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria)
were convicted of rape at rates 20, 23, 17, 9, 10 and 18 greater than
individuals born in Sweden respectively. Both the 1996 and 2005 reports have been criticized for using insufficient controls for socioeconomic factors.
A 2013 study found that both first- and second-generation
immigrants have a higher rate of suspected offenses than indigenous
Swedes.
While first-generation immigrants have the highest offender rate, the
offenders have the lowest average number of offenses, which indicates
that there is a high rate of low-rate offending (many suspected
offenders with only one single registered offense). The rate of chronic
offending (offenders suspected of several offenses) is higher among
indigenous Swedes than first-generation immigrants. Second-generation
immigrants have higher rates of chronic offending than first-generation
immigrants but lower total offender rates.
United Kingdom
Historically, Irish immigrants to the United Kingdom in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were considered over-represented
amongst those appearing in court. Research suggests that policing
strategy may have put immigrants at a disadvantage by targeting only the
most public forms of crime, while locals were more likely able to
engage in the types of crimes that could be conducted behind locked
doors.
An analysis of historical courtroom records suggests that despite
higher rates of arrest, immigrants were not systematically disadvantaged
by the British court system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
On 30 June 2013 there were 10,786 prisoners from 160 different countries in the jails of England and Wales. Poland, Jamaica and the Irish Republic formed the highest percentage of foreign nationals in UK prisons. In total, foreigners represented 13% of the prison population, whereas foreign nationals are 13% of the total population in England and Wales. During the 2000s, there was a 111% increase of foreign nationals in UK prisons. According to one study, "there is little evidence to support the theory
that the foreign national prison population continues to grow because
foreign nationals are more likely to commit crime than are British
citizens or more likely to commit crime of a serious nature".
The increase may partly be due to the disproportionate number of
convicted for drug offences; crimes associated with illegal immigration
(fraud and forgery of government documents, and immigration offenses);
ineffective deportation provisions; and a lack of viable options to
custody (which affects bail and sentencing decision making).
Research has found no evidence of an average causal impact of immigration on crime.
One study based on evidence from England and Wales in the 2000s found
no evidence of an average causal impact of immigration on crime in
England and Wales,.
No causal impact and no immigrant differences in the likelihood of
being arrested were found for London, which saw large immigration
changes.
A study of two large waves of immigration to the UK (the late
1990s/early 2000s asylum seekers and the post-2004 inflow from EU
accession countries) found that the "first wave led to a modest but
significant rise in property crime, while the second wave had a small
negative impact. There was no effect on violent crime; arrest rates were
not different, and changes in crime cannot be ascribed to crimes
against immigrants. The findings are consistent with the notion that
differences in labor market opportunities of different migrant groups
shape their potential impact on crime."
A 2013 study found "that crime is significantly lower in those
neighborhoods with sizeable immigrant population shares" and that "the
crime reducing effect is substantially enhanced if the enclave is
composed of immigrants from the same ethnic background."
A 2014 study of property crimes based on the Crime and Justice Survey
(CJS) of 2003, (a national representative survey where respondents in
England and Wales were asked questions regarding their criminal
activities), after taking into account the under-reporting of crimes,
even found that "immigrants who are located in London and black
immigrants are significantly less criminally active than their native
counterparts".
Another 2014 study found that "areas that have witnessed the greatest
percentage of recent immigrants arriving since 2004 have not witnessed
higher levels of robbery, violence, or sex offending" but have
"experienced higher levels of drug offenses."
It was reported in 2007 that more than one-fifth of solved crimes in London
was committed by immigrants. Around a third of all solved, reported sex
offences and a half of all solved, reported frauds in the capital were
carried out by non-British citizens. A 2008 study found that the crime rate of Eastern European immigrants was the same as that of the indigenous population.
North America
Canada
A
2014 study found that immigration reduced the crime rate in Canada:
"new immigrants do not have a significant impact on property crime
rates, but as they stay longer, more established immigrants actually
decrease property crime rates significantly."
United States
Crime
There is no empirical evidence that either legal or illegal immigration increases crime rate in the United States.
Most studies in the U.S. have found lower crime rates among immigrants
than among non-immigrants, and that higher concentrations of immigrants
are associated with lower crime rates. These findings contradict popular perceptions that immigration increases crime. Some research even suggests that increases in immigration may partly explain the reduction in the U.S. crime rate. A 2017 study suggests that immigration did not play a significant part in lowering the crime rate.
A 2005 study showed that immigration to large U.S. metropolitan areas
does not increase, and in some cases decreases, crime rates there. A 2009 study found that recent immigration was not associated with homicide in Austin, Texas.
The low crime rates of immigrants to the United States despite having
lower levels of education, lower levels of income and residing in urban
areas (factors that should lead to higher crime rates) may be due to
lower rates of antisocial behavior among immigrants.
This phenomenon is known as the immigrant paradox, in which immigrants
have better health and behavioral outcomes despite socio-economic
disadvantage.
A 2015 study found that Mexican immigration to the United States was
associated with an increase in aggravated assaults and a decrease in
property crimes.
A 2016 study finds no link between immigrant populations and violent
crime, although there is a small but significant association between
undocumented immigrants and drug-related crime.
A 2018 study found that undocumented immigration to the United States did not increase violent crime.
A 2017 study found that "Increased undocumented immigration was
significantly associated with reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose
deaths, and DUI arrests, net of other factors." Research finds that Secure Communities,
an immigration enforcement program which led to a quarter of a million
of detentions (when the study was published; November 2014), had no
observable impact on the crime rate. A 2015 study found that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act
(IRCA), which legalized almost 3 million immigrants, led to "decreases
in crime of 3–5 percent, primarily due to decline in property crimes,
equivalent to 120,000–180,000 fewer violent and property crimes
committed each year due to legalization". According to two studies, sanctuary cities—which
adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being an
undocumented immigrant—have no statistically meaningful effect on crime. A 2018 study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that by restricting the employment opportunities for unauthorized immigrants, IRCA likely caused an increase in crime.
A 2018 paper found no statistically significant evidence that refugees to the United States have an impact on crime rates.
A separate 2018 paper by scholars at the Immigration Policy Lab at
Stanford University found that Trump's refugee ban (which caused a 66%
reduction in refugee resettlement) had no impact on crime rates.
One of the first political analyses in the U.S. of the
relationship between immigration and crime was performed in the
beginning of the 20th century by the Dillingham Commission, which found a relationship especially for immigrants from non-Northern European countries, resulting in the sweeping 1920s immigration reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924, which favored immigration from Northern and Northwestern Europe over the supposedly criminally-inclined immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (e.g. mainly Italians, as well as certain Slavs and Jews from Eastern Europe.)
Recent research is skeptical of the conclusion drawn by the Dillingham
Commission. One study finds that, "major government commissions on
immigration and crime in the early twentieth century relied on evidence
that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate
population data, which led them to present partial and sometimes
misleading views of the immigrant-native criminality comparison. With
improved data and methods, we find that in 1904, prison commitment rates
for more serious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages
except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitment rate for immigrants was
higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely
than natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but
this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent
offenses."
For the early twentieth century, one study found that immigrants
had "quite similar" imprisonment rates for major crimes as natives in
1904 but lower for major crimes (except violent offenses; the rate was
similar) in 1930. Contemporary commissions used dubious data and interpreted it in questionable ways. A study by Harvard economist Nathan Nunn, Yale economist Nancy Qian
and LSE economist Sandra Sequeira found that the Age of Mass Migration
(1850–1920) had no long-run effects on crime rates in the United States.
Terrorism
According to a review by the Washington Post
fact-checker of the available research and evidence, there is nothing
to support President Trump's claim that "the vast majority of
individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here
from outside of our country."
The fact-checker noted that the Government Accountability Office had
found that "of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death
since Sept. 12, 2001, 73 percent (62) were committed by far-right-wing
violent extremist groups, and 27 percent (23) by radical Islamist
violent extremists".
A bulletin by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security also warned
in May 2017 that white supremacist groups were “responsible for a lion’s
share of violent attacks among domestic extremist groups". According to a report by the New America
foundation, of the individuals credibly involved in radical
Islamist-inspired activity in the United States since 9/11, the large
majority were US-born citizens, not immigrants.
A 2018 paper found no statistically significant evidence that
refugee settlements in the United States are linked to terrorism events.
Oceania
Australia
Foreigners are under-represented in the Australian prison population, according to 2010 figures.
A 1987 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology noted that
studies had consistently found that migrant populations in Australia had
lower crime rates than the Australian-born population.
The alleged link between immigration and criminality has been a
longstanding meme in Australian history with many of the original
immigrants being convicts. During the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of
emigrants to the country arrived from Italy and Greece, and were shortly
afterwards associated with local crime. This culminated in the "Greek
conspiracy case" of the 1970s, when Greek physicians were accused of
defrauding the Medibank
system. The police were later found to have conducted investigations
improperly, and the doctors were eventually cleared of all charges.
After the demise of the White Australia policy
restricting non-European immigration, the first large settler
communities from Asia emerged. This development was accompanied by a
moral panic regarding a potential spike in criminal activity by the Triads and similar organizations. In 1978, the erstwhile weekly The National Times also reported on involvement in the local drug trade by Calabrian Italian, Turkish, Lebanese and Chinese dealers.
Discourse surrounding immigrant crime reached a head in the late 1990s. The fatal stabbing of a Korean teenager in Punchbowl in October 1998 followed by a drive-by shooting of the Lakemba police station prompted then New South Wales Premier Bob Carr and NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan to blame the incidents on Lebanese gangs. Spurred on by the War on Terror, immigrant identities became increasingly criminalized in the popular Sydney media. By the mid-2000s and the outbreak of the Cronulla riots,
sensationalist broadcast and tabloid media representations had
reinforced existing stereotypes of immigrant communities as criminal
entities and ethnic enclaves as violent and dangerous areas.
The only reliable statistics on immigrant crime in Australia are
based on imprisonment rates by place of birth. As of 1999, this data
indicated that immigrants from Vietnam (2.7 per 1,000 of population),
Lebanon (1.6) and New Zealand (1.6) were over-represented within the
national criminal justice system. Compared to the Australian-born (1),
immigrants from Italy (0.6), the United Kingdom (0.6), Ireland (0.6) and
Greece (0.5) were under-represented.
Victoria Police
said in 2012 that Sudanese and Somali immigrants were around five times
more likely to commit crimes than other state residents. The rate of
offending in the Sudanese community was 7109.1 per 100,000 individuals,
whereas it was 6141.8 per 100,000 for Somalis, and 1301.0 per 100,000
for the wider Victoria community. Robbery and assault said to have been
the most common types of crime committed by the Sudanese and Somali
residents, with assault purported to represent 29.5% and 24.3% of all
offences, respectively. The overall proportion of crime in the state
said to have been committed by members of the Sudanese community was
0.92 percent, while it was 0.35 percent for Somali residents. People
born in Sudan and Somalia are around 0.1 and 0.05 per cent,
respectively, of Victoria's population. Journalist Dan Oakes, writing in
The Age, noted that individuals arrested and charged might have been falsely claiming to belong to each community.
In 2015, Sudanese-born youths were "vastly over-represented" in
Victoria Police LEAP data, responsible for 7.44 per cent of alleged home
invasions, 5.65 per cent of car thefts and 13.9 per cent of aggravated
robberies. A similar overrepresentation occurs in Kenyan-born
youths. In January 2018, Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton that
there was an "issue with overrepresentation by African youth in serious
and violent offending as well as public disorder issues".
In 2010, six applicants brought charges of impropriety against
several members of the Victorian Police, the Chief Commissioner of
Victoria Police, and the State of Victoria in the Melbourne areas of Flemington and Kensington. The ensuing Haile-Michael v Konstantinidis case alleged various forms of mistreatment by the public officials in violation of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. In March 2012, an order of discovery was made, whereby established statistician Ian Gordon of the University of Melbourne
independently analysed Victorian Police LEAP data from Flemington and
North Melbourne (2005–2008). The report concluded that residents from
Africa were two and a half times more likely to be subjected to an
arbitrary "stop and search" than their representation in the population.
Although the justification provided for such disproportionate policing
measures was over-representation in local crime statistics, the study
found that the same police LEAP data in reality showed that male
immigrants from Africa on average committed substantially less crime
than male immigrants from other backgrounds. Despite this, the latter
alleged male offenders were observed to be 8.5 times more likely not to
be the subject of a police "field contact". The case was eventually
settled on 18 February 2013, with a landmark agreement that the Victoria
Police would publicly review its "field contact" and training
processes. The inquiry is expected to help police identify areas where
discrimination in the criminal justice system has the potential to or
does occur; implement institutional reforms as pre-emptive measures in
terms of training, policy and practice; predicate changes on
international law enforcement best practices; ammeliorate the local
police's interactions with new immigrants and ethnic minorities, as well
as with the Aboriginal community; and serve as a benchmark for proper
conduct vis-a-vis other police departments throughout the country.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics regularly publishes
characteristics of those incarcerated including country of birth. The
2014 figures show that in general native-born Australians, New
Zealanders, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Sudanese, Iraqi and people from Fiji
are responsible for higher share of crime than their share in the
population (overrepresented), while people from the UK, the Chinese and
people from Philippines are responsible for a lower share
(underrepresented).
New Zealand
Foreigners are under-represented in the New Zealand prison population, according to 2010 figures.
Perception of immigrant criminality
Research
suggests that people overestimate the relationship between immigration
and criminality. A 2016 study of Belgium found that living in an
ethnically diverse community lead to a greater fear of crime, unrelated
to the actual crime rate.
A 2015 study found that the increase in immigration flows into western
European countries that took place in the 2000s did "not affect crime
victimization, but it is associated with an increase in the fear of
crime, the latter being consistently and positively correlated with the
natives’ unfavourable attitude toward immigrants." Americans dramatically overestimate the relationship between refugees and terrorism.
A 2018 study found that media coverage of immigrants in the United
States has a general tendency to emphasize illegality and/or criminal
behavior in a way that is inconsistent with actual immigrant
demographics.
Political consequences
Research
suggests that the perception that there is a positive causal link
between immigration and crime leads to greater support for
anti-immigration policies or parties.
Research also suggests a vicious cycle of bigotry and immigrant
alienation could exacerbate immigrant criminality and bigotry. For
instance, University of California, San Diego political scientist Claire
Adida, Stanford University political scientist David Laitin and
Sorbonne University economist Marie-Anne Valfort argue "fear-based
policies that target groups of people according to their religion or
region of origin are counter-productive. Our own research, which
explains the failed integration of Muslim immigrants in France, suggests
that such policies can feed into a vicious cycle that damages national
security. French Islamophobia—a response to cultural difference—has
encouraged Muslim immigrants to withdraw from French society, which then
feeds back into French Islamophobia, thus further exacerbating Muslims’
alienation, and so on. Indeed, the failure of French security in 2015
was likely due to police tactics that intimidated rather than welcomed
the children of immigrants—an approach that makes it hard to obtain
crucial information from community members about potential threats."
A study of the long-run effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks
found that the post-9/11 increase in hate crimes against Muslims
decreased assimilation by Muslim immigrants.
Controlling for relevant factors, the authors found that "Muslim
immigrants living in states with the sharpest increase in hate crimes
also exhibit: greater chances of marrying within their own ethnic group;
higher fertility; lower female labour force participation; and lower
English proficiency."
States that experience terrorist acts on their own soil or
against their own citizens are more likely to adopt stricter
restrictions on asylum recognition.
Individuals who believe that African Americans and Hispanics are more
prone to violence are more likely to support capital punishment.
The Dillingham Commission
singled out immigrants from Southern Europe for their involvement in
violent crime (even though the data did not support its conclusions). The Commission's overall findings provided the rationale for sweeping 1920s immigration reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which favored immigration from northern and western Europe
by restricting the annual number of immigrants from any given country
to 3 percent of the total number of people from that country living in
the United States in 1910. The movement for immigration restriction
that the Dillingham Commission helped to stimulate culminated in the National Origins Formula, part of the Immigration Act of 1924, which capped national immigration at 150,000 annually and completely barred immigration from Asia.
