Friday, December 24, 2010

Fact-Based Immigration Policy

The other day I was watching a segment on Fox News about the killing of border agent Brian Terry. It struck me that had I not already done extensive research on the subjects of immigration, the drug war, and Mexico, I would have come to conclusions that are the exact opposite of what is actually taking place on our Southwest border. So let me repeat a line that I have argued to conservatives for some time now: we need to build the conservative movement on reality, not on populist hysteria.

Having that in mind, I will be starting a short series on the immigration problem. I believe that the conservative position ought to be greater border security, comprehensive immigration reform, and a pathway to legalization for current, undocumented workers. This series will seek to dispel some of the myths surrounding our immigration system, so that the conservative movement can base their policies on facts and not on cultural resentment.

Myth #1: Violence is out of hand on our border. 

The scope of empirical evidence is so largely against this tall tale, that it seems hardly worth even mentioning. That is, if it wasn't for the fact that Fox News and conservative leaders preach it on a daily basis. I don't have time and space to fully summarize all of the data that debunks this myth, but here are a few snippets.
First 


Both contemporary and historical studies, including official crime statistics and victimization surveys since the early 1990s, data from the last three decennial censuses, national and regional surveys in areas of immigrant concentration, and investigations carried out by major government commissions over the past century, have shown instead that immigration is associated with lower crime rates and lower incarceration rates.

Second 



In particular, first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) were 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans, adjusting for individual, family, and neighborhood background. Second-generation immigrants were 22 percent less likely to commit violence than the third generation. This pattern held true for non-Hispanic whites and blacks as well. Our study further showed living in a neighborhood of concentrated immigration was directly associated with lower violence (again, after taking into account a host of correlated factors, including poverty and an individual’s immigrant status). Immigration thus appeared “protective” against violence. 


Third, 

Even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent.Cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami also have experienced declining crime rates during this period.Among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was 5 times higher than the 0.7 percent incarceration rate of the foreign-born.

Fourth 

The first is that, by and large, crime is down across the board. In Arizona as a whole, it has dropped 12 percent in the past seven years. But in major Maricopa County cities with their own police forces -- Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale and Tempe -- the rate has dropped even faster. (The group measured within Maricopa County because it is the epicenter of the immigration debate. But in Tuscon, which is not in the county, there has also been a drop in the crime rate since 2002, according to law enforcement statistics)

Fifth

The FBI's uniform crime reports show violent crime is no more prevalent in border cities than in nonborder cities.

Since 2001, the average violent-crime rate in eight border cities declined, and it has remained below the national violent-crime rate since 2005, said an August 2010 report by the Congressional Research Center, which reviewed FBI crime reports from 1998 to 2008.

In Tucson and Phoenix - the two largest cities on the smuggling route through Arizona - murder and violent crime decreased from 2005 to 2009, FBI data show.

The ratio of assaults on Border Patrol agents dipped 36 percent across the Southwest border from 2007 to 2010.

Are there drug traffickers operating in the United States? Of course. Americans consume more drugs than any other nationality in the world. There are drug traffickers all over the United States. Is Arizona falling to the violence that we read about going on daily in Mexico? No. 

We ought to have more border security. But not because of Arizona. 


More to come...

Cross posted at The Cross Culturalist

2 comments:

Not enough resources in a bad economy said...

Pablo,

No offense, but I get the feeling your trying to defend something, some group?

You mention that Republicans should push immigration reform. Yet you radiate the aura that we owe these people who came hear illegally something.

We owe the nothing

Am I wrong?

You say we should allow those hear illegally a track to citizenship. What is the cut-off?

Those climbing the wall now? Those climbing the wall next week?

Pablo said...

No, we don't owe anyone anything. And, no, I do not argue that those here illegally should become citizens more quickly than what US law prescribes (3-5 years with a green card).

The point of this post as the future ones is to try to convince conservatives to build policy based upon fact.