Wednesday 2 January 2019

Immigrants (even illegal ones) don't commit more crimes...


Of course, you all know this (just as you knew immigrants are more likely to work, pay a higher proportion of earnings in tax, are less likely to be ill and don't receive as much welfare - they also have fewer children so make less use of schools) but the continuing rhetoric about immigration - migrants, refugees, asylum seekers - still talks about such folk as a problem.

Here's the evidence on crime (it's from the US - one of those nasty right wing think tanks, no less - but I don't expect it to be much different elsewhere):
Previous empirical studies of immigrant criminality generally find that immigrants do not increase local crime rates, are less likely to cause crime than their native-born peers, and are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans.5 Illegal immigrant incarceration rates are not well studied; however, recent Cato Institute research based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that, as a percentage of their respective populations, illegal immigrants represented 56 percent fewer criminal convictions than native-born Americans in Texas in 2015.6 The low illegal immigrant incarceration rate is consistent with other research that finds more targeting of immigrants does not reduce the crime rate, which would occur if they were more crime prone than natives.7
The reality is that, almost everywhere, the net benefit from immigration is positive. Our problem is that we're full or that immigrants put massive additional strain on public services but rather that we're really bad at integrating new residents into local communities. Some of this is about racism but it's also a consequence of multiculturalism - in a society where nine out of ten people live in one culture, making a false equivalence for immigrants with a different culture won't work. And when that false equivalence becomes an obsession, the result is resentful behaviour by the majority culture.

Immigration is great but it would be even better if our expectation of immigrants was to be part of our culture not to live what Herman Ouseley called "parallel lives".


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3 comments:

Sobers said...

You can't prevent cultural non assimilation when there are so many immigrants that the original culture is long dead. What culture is a new arrival to a tower block like Grenfell Tower supposed to be assimilating to? It wasn't exactly full of cockneys, people from the regions of the UK come to London for work and a smattering of Irish was it?

If you add an extra ingredient into a an existing mix, a small amount may indeed improve the original. If you keep adding it you make it worse, and eventually you no longer have any of the original left and you have just the extra ingredient.

Anonymous said...

I suggest checking the percentage origins of UK prison inmates - those from immigrant sources far outstrip their proportion in the total UK population.

Maybe they don't commit more crime, they're just not as good at getting away with it - that's about the only reason I can come up with to explain it.

Andrew Carey said...

the continuing rhetoric about immigration - migrants, refugees, asylum seekers
That pretty much is rhetoric itself.
The people who describe immigrants thus don't want to think about the composition of migrant groups.
Data from the USA reflects people who have migrated to work and who are not entitled to claim public funds, certainly not for their first 5 years, a period in which those who can't hack it will leave. It's a self-selecting group on many levels.
Let's see the breakdown for crime and fiscal contribution for
-legal migration for work, with NRTPF ( like the USA )
-legal migration for work, with entitlement to benefits if one is workless and partner is working 24 hrs a week for 3 months or more
-illegal migration for work
-those granted refugee status
-those not granted refugee status but who don't leave
-2nd generation migrants
-students
-migration driven by UK government policy such as letting the doctors union restrict the numbers of training places in UK medical schools meaning more imported medics are needed
-migration driven by subsidising foreign farming to become more productive, particularly in E Europe, meaning the displaced work force has to look elsewhere for opportunities