Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence, Intro
Ramiro Martinez, Abel Valenzuela, Jr ed.
Response 3 of 5
by Anna
New York, a city of constant flux, is known to be a hub of immigration. It is home to Queens, the urban place with the global record of ethnic diversity. (Wikipedia) But just because so many people exist in the same place, they don’t always coexist peacefully. Popular sentiment is that an increase of immigration equals an increase in crime. However, according to Ramiro Martinez and Abel Valenzuela, Jr ed, the data points to the contrary. If the numbers suggest one thing, why is public opinion the opposite?
The roles of xenophobia and nativism cannot be ignored in the USA. The current presidential administration perfectly illustrates these sentiments being pushed further into national discourse, augmented by unsupported claims, “alternative facts,” and other forms of obstructing truth. Ramiro Martinez and Abel Valenzuela, Jr ed, point to an overrepresentation of the issue as the source of “public hysteria over immigrant crime.” (5) This type of manipulation of public sentiment is not new. Historically, there have been many cases of pseudo-academic findings that equate increasing immigration with increasing crime. One author reasons that Cuban immigrants to Miami were the source of the city’s increasing crime rates, but ignores the fact that crime rates were rising nationally, including areas without significant immigration. At times, sentiments were as extreme as blaming immigrants as having a biological predisposition to violence.
The link between increasing immigration and increasing crime is often just assumed. There is a lack of sound data to support this connection, but when data is analyzed correctly, the findings are that while immigration increases steadily, crime rates fluctuate between time periods. When data is examined for a specific given area, it often shows that immigration to that area either does not affect or even decreases crime rates. Other factors, such as “economic deprivation and social instability” (10) need to be considered, beyond just ethnicity and nationality. When those factors are considered, Ramiro Martinez and Abel Valenzuela, Jr ed, found “null or negative effects of immigration on lethal and nonlethal violence … higher levels of immigrants have either no effect on or are associated with lower levels of crime and violence.” (10) Despite the historical background of misconstrued evidence, the fact that immigration does not increase crime rates remains true.
Questions:
How would the national discourse change if there was public access to unbiased information about the effects of immigration, especially in terms of crime?
To what purpose does the correlation between immigration and crime serve? Is it simply stemming from racism and xenophobia, or are there other reasons to oppose immigration?
