New Study Finds that Undocumented Immigrants Less Likely to Commit Murder than US Citizens

Ever since Donald Trump's unfortunate comments about Mexican "rapists" during the 2016 campaign, few topics have garnered more attention than crime rates among undocumented immigrants. We have published the results of many of those studies and the truth is that the undocumented population of America tends to be more peaceable than the rest of us. Last year Alex Nowrasteh of the CATO institute published a piece reviewing the research, much of which has been conducted in Texas because it keeps detailed records on criminal convictions and has a large illegal immigrant population.

CATO: "The second strand of research from Cato looks at criminal conviction rates by immigration status in the state of Texas.  Unlike every other state, Texas keeps track of the immigration statuses of convicted criminals and the crimes that they committed.  Texas is a wonderful state to study because it borders Mexico, has a large illegal immigrant population, is a politically conservative state governed by Republicans, had no jurisdictions that limited its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement in 2015, and it has a law and order reputation for strictly enforcing criminal laws.  If anything, Texas is more serious about enforcing laws against illegal immigrant criminals than other states.  But even here, illegal immigrant conviction rates are about half those of native-born Americans – without any controls for age, education, ethnicity, or any other characteristic.  The illegal immigrant conviction rates for homicide, larceny, and sex crimes are also below those of native-born Americans.  The criminal conviction rates for legal immigrants are the lowest of all."

The results of another academic study conducted in Texas was released this week. The researchers, led by Erin Orrick of Sam Houston University, focused on the relationship between immigration status and homicide incarceration rates in the state. They found that while undocumented immigrants were more likely to commit murder than legal immigrants, they were significantly less inclined than US citizens.

Sagepub.com: "Using data from Texas, results show that native-born U.S. citizens are incarcerated for homicide at higher rates than almost all immigrant groups. While the incarceration rate for undocumented immigrants was 24% greater than the rate for all foreign-citizens, this rate was significantly less than that for U.S. citizens. Among the immigrant status classifications available in this study, all were associated with lower incarceration rates for homicide than that of U.S. citizens."

No amount of research is going to completely extinguish the myth of violent illegals ["bad hombres"] crossing the border to prey on Americans, but maybe we can push such narratives out of the mainstream and into the dark recesses of AM talk radio where they belong.

#research #news #immigration

By: Don Lam & Curated Content