IMMIGRATION (USA)
Check out this document by MrKazuma as well – much more up-to-date and thorough than what the Source Library has to offer.
Crime
Crime
Immigrants to the US commit less crime than native citizens.
- FEE: Nowrasteh 15
- Census Data
- In 2010, 10.7 percent of native-born men aged 18-39 without a high school degree were incarcerated compared to 2.8 percent of Mexican immigrants and 1.7 percent of Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants.
- “The disparity in incarceration rates has existed for decades… incarceration rates of the native-born were anywhere from two to five times higher than that of immigrants.”
- Macro-Analysis
- 159 cities at three dates between 1980 and 2000: crime rates and levels of immigration are not correlated (Ousey and Kubrin)
- 111 US cities with populations of at least 5,000 Hispanics and found no statistically significant findings. (Martinez 2008)
- 150 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and found that levels of recent immigration had a statistically significant downward effect on homicide rates but no effect on property crime rates. (Reid et al. 2005)
- American Immigration Council: Ewing et al. 15
- The violent crime rate declined by 48% and the property crime rate by 41% during the period of 1990 to 2013, while the undocumented population more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million.
- Keep in mind that correlation =/= causation, which makes this source pretty weak
- Consensus (it’s wikipedia)
- 26 citations
- 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
- PEW 13
- The crime rate among second-generation immigrants increases to “catch up” to the native population
- Falk et al. 13
- The majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by a small number of persistent violent offenders, typically males, characterized by early onset of violent criminality, substance abuse, personality disorders, and nonviolent criminality.
- To take away in this context: America’s current legal immigration system does a rather good job filtering these people out because highly specialized, rich, etc people tend to not have these issues
- Light & Miller 18
- Longitudinal analysis of the relationship between ILLEGAL immigration and violent crime, using data from a variety of sources that covers all 50 US states from 1990-2014
- Violent crime here is considered to be homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and rape
- Finds that the relationship between illegal immigration and violent crime is generally negative
- Suggests that common explanations for this relationship don’t have much evidence: “Using supplemental models of victimization data and instrumental variable methods, we find little evidence that these results are due to decreased reporting or selective migration to avoid crime.”
- Gunadi 2020
- Specifically deals with DACA and local crime rates
- “Thee results of this analysis show no evidence that DACA statistically significantly affected the incarceration rate of undocumented youth. Furthermore, [..] implementation of DACA is not associated with a statistically significant change in violent crime rate.”
- “ However, there is evidence that the enactment of DACA is associated with lower property crime rates. An increase of one DACA application approved per 1,000 population (∼1 S.D. increase) is associated with 1.6% decline in overall property crime rate. Further analysis shows that this reduction is driven by the decline in burglary and larceny rates.”
Diversity Doesn't Hurt Social Cohesion
Diversity Doesn’t Hurt Social Cohesion
Diversity and immigration don’t hurt social cohesion. Keep in mind that this section is not focused specifically on mass immigration. (credit to Mouthy Infidel for some of this research) Keep in mind that this research needs to be reviewed again by us because I’ve heard it misrepresents stuff and lacks nuance
- Meer & Tolsma 14
- Enormous meta-analysis of 90 cross-sectional studies analyzing relationship between diversity & social cohesion.
- Vast majority of studies on the subject fail to prove the relationship between two variables.
- In fact, study finds positive relationships between inter-ethnic contact & trust in ethnically heterogeneous communities.
- Only contrary data shows small-scale (intra-neighborhood) trust suffers with ethnic heterogeneity in some circumstances, and even then only in America.
- Plurality of data does not support - and largely contradicts - assertion that diversity hurts social cohesion.
- Nai et al. 18
- Study examining a range of experiments meant to gauge the relationship between diversity and social cohesion.
- Study finds all of the experiments found a positive relationship between diversity and social cohesion.
- Proposed mechanism is that diversity causes people to identify more broadly with humanity, increasing sociability.
- Williamson 08
- Longitudinal study comparing the change in social cohesion over time in an area which experienced a large increase in diversity with a comparative control which didn’t.
- The two areas did not differ significantly in how their levels of social cohesion changed over time, suggesting the increased level of diversity had no statistically significant impact on social cohesion.
- Ziller 14
- Another longitudinal study analyzing changes in trust in 22 European countries between the years 2002 and 2010.
- Study suggests immigration often leads to decrease in social trust, but results were heavily affected by ethnic polarization & economic stability.
- With low polarization and a good economy, immigration was shown to actually increase social trust.
- Results suggest it isn’t the diversity of immigrants which lessens trust, but rather the economic and political context in which they arrive.
- De et al. 15
- Source showing how immigrant mobility reverses ethnocentrism - “Our empirical analysis of archival data verifies that contexts with high residential mobility indeed have less out-group hostility than those with low mobility”
- They use a model similar to the Hartshorn et al. 13 evidence (the harthorn evidence is used by chuds to prove that ethnocentrism will always be the result of immigration)
- Christ et al. 14
- “Contextual effect of positive intergroup contact on outgroup prejudice”, McKenna, et al. “Are diverse groups less cohesive?”
- “[Our] data show[s] consistently across seven studies that individuals’ outgroup attitudes are more positive when living in social contexts in which people have, on average, more positive intergroup contact. Moreover, we found a consistent contextual effect of contact on prejudice in each study: indeed, the effect of intergroup contact between social contexts is greater than the effect of individual-level contact within contexts. In four studies we provided evidence that this contextual effect is accompanied by more tolerant social norms that possibly explain the larger effect of intergroup contact on the social-context level of analysis. Thus, positive intergroup contact is associated with reduced prejudice on a macro- and not merely [micro level], whereby people are influenced by the behavior of others in their wider social context” (Christ et al… [pg. 4]).
- Vezzali et al. 17
- Social cohesion educational setting
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“Consistent with the fact that optimal contact conditions are likely present in educational settings, research has provided consistent evidence that face-to-face contact is an extremely effective tool for improving intergroup relations. Empirical effectiveness has been demonstrated on a wide range of outcome measures, including outgroup perceived variability (Turner, Tam, Hewstone, Kenworthy, & Cairns, 2013), behavioral intentions toward the outgroup (Abbott & Cameron, 2014; for a review, see Cameron & Turner, 2017)” (Vezzali et al… 17 [pg. 4]).
- Lymperopoulou 19
- “Immigration and Ethnic Diversity in England and Wales Examined Through an Area Classification Framework”
- Examines the complexities of diversity’s impact (both positives and negatives) on social cohesion
- “In the UK, studies have generally shown that it is area deprivation and not ethnic diversity which erodes social cohesion (Letki 2008; Laurence 2011; Becares et al. 2011; Sturgis et al. 2011).” [pg. 830]
- “Traditional ethnic minority settlement areas with high socio-economic diversity and high migration rates for migrants of different nationalities and migration streams are associated with higher levels of social cohesion and inter-ethnic social mixing.” [pg. 843]
- “Improvements in the economic circumstances of local populations, and investments in resources in local areas such as housing, will minimize perceptions of competition for resources and improve community relations. In the long-term, increases in ethnic diversity are likely to promote contact, tolerance and understanding and improve social cohesion (Laurence and Heath 2008).” [pg. 844]
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691615598513
Economic Growth
Economic Growth
Immigrants greatly benefit the economy, growth, and innovation
Jobs and Wages
Jobs and Wages
Immigrants are a necessary component of the job market and entrepreneurship. Low-skill immigrants only sometimes cause minor depressions in the wages of low-skill native workers (those without high school diploma) and other low-skill immigrants, yet even in these cases, wage depressions are very small.
- Brookings: Hoban 17
- Immigrants are highly skilled and necessary to the job market
- College graduates are more prevalent among recent immigrant adults than among all adults in 90 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas.
- National Bureau of Economic Research: Kerr 16 (cited)
- Immigrants contribute to entrepreneurship and innovation greatly
- Immigrants constitute 15% of the general U.S. workforce, but they account for around a quarter of U.S. entrepreneurs
- This immigrant share of entrepreneurship has been increasing dramatically since the mid-1990s
- “Most of our work focuses on 11 states present in the LEHD since 1992, which include California and Florida. We estimate 24% of entrepreneurs in these states from 1995-2008 are immigrants, which broadly corresponds with other studies. As important, this immigrant entrepreneurship share [rose] from 17% in 1995 to 27% in 2008” (Kerr & Kerr 16 [pg. 2]).
- New American Economy Factsheet: Key Takeaways
- 93.3% of the over 1,250,000 DACA eligible population is employed
- 90% of the undocumented population is working age and 86.6% of males are working
- Compared to 80% of the foreign born population and 62.2% of the native-born population
- National Bureau of Economic Research: Ottaviano & Peri 06
- National Bureau of Economic Research paper on the effects immigration has on wages in the United States
- Study contends previous analyses on the relationship between immigration and wages falsely assumed perfect labor substitutability between immigrants and native workers of similar education levels, distorting results
- Research shows average American wage RISES due to immigration, both short-term and long-term
- Only native demographic whose wages drop are High School dropouts who suffer a decrease in wages of approximately ~2% short-term, alleviating to ~1.1% over time.
- Study finds new immigration does severely impact wages of prior immigrants, suggesting lack of substitutability with *natives.
- Overall, vast majority of American workers’ wages increase from immigration, High School dropouts (<10% of population) experience a slight decrease which alleviates with time (and there is evidence that immigration may increase native High School graduation rates, too).
- Ortega & Verdugo 14
- Similar research to the above paper, except conducted on the French labor market.
- Findings are near-identical; immigration leads to across-the-board wage increases for all except a small minority of low-education native workers.
- Reaffirms conclusion that there is low substitutability between native workers and immigrant workers.
- Card 90
- Famous research on the Mariel Boatlift and the impact of a wave of Cuban immigrants (mostly low-skilled) on the economy of Miami.
- Research found essentially no impact on native wages, even for low-skilled workers, despite the Mariel Boatlift increasing Miami’s labor force by seven percent.
- Even former Cuban immigrants didn’t seem to be affected.
- Note: this stuff was revisited by George Borjas who found different results, but his work on the subject has received a good bit of criticism (see Studies to Watch Out For section of this doc for more info)
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 16 (news release, better to cite)
- When measured over a period of 10 years or more, the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers overall is very small. To the extent that negative impacts occur, they are most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born workers who have not completed high school—who are often the closest substitutes for immigrant workers with low skills.
- There is little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers. As with wage impacts, there is some evidence that recent immigrants reduce the employment rate of prior immigrants. In addition, recent research finds that immigration reduces the number of hours worked by native teens (but not their employment levels).
- Immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S.
- Some evidence on inflow of skilled immigrants suggests that there may be positive wage effects for some subgroups of native-born workers, and other benefits to the economy more broadly.
- Ojeda 09
- Report which investigates the effects of the “The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986” (IRCA) which led the way to the legalization of over 2.7 million undocumented immigrants within five years.
- Finds that when the Department of Labor reported over the four year period following legalization (1988-1992) of undocumented immigrants, that the mean hourly wages of the general U.S. worker grew by 15%. (16.1% for the mean hourly wage of a U.S. citizen worker)
- Keep in mind, that legalization occurred at the same time in a period when the U.S. unemployment rate rose from 5.3% to 7.5%
- “Almost immediately, IRCA-based legalization had the effect of giving rights to more workers, raising the low wage floor of the economy, reducing the demand for easily exploitable immigrants, and reducing illegal crossings and apprehensions. (– without huge expenditures on a border wall).”
Taxes and Social Security
Taxes and Social Security
(Undocumented) Immigrants consistently pay into the system
- Institute on Taxation and National Economic Policy (ITEP) 13
- Undocumented Immigrants paid an estimated $10.6 billion to state and local taxes in 2010
- Allowing undocumented immigrants to work in the United States legally would increase their state and local tax contributions by an estimated $2 billion a year
- Social Security Administration (SSA) 13
- Undocumented Immigrants paying an estimated $12 billion a year into Social Security with no intention of ever collecting benefits
- “we estimate that earnings by unauthorized immigrants result in a net positive effect on Social Security financial status generally, and that this effect contributed roughly $12 billion to the cash flow of the program for 2010. We estimate that future years will experience a continuation of this positive impact on the trust funds.”
- New American Economy Factsheet: Key Takeaways
- $100 billion SSA surplus was generated by undocumented immigrants in the last decade
- $35.1 billion Medicare surplus was generated by undocumented immigrants from 2000-2011
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 16 (news release, better to cite)
- In terms of fiscal impacts, first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments, mainly at the state and local levels, than are the native-born, in large part due to the costs of educating their children. However, as adults, the children of immigrants (the second generation) are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population.
- Over the long term, the impacts of immigrants on government budgets are generally positive at the federal level but remain negative at the state and local level — but these generalizations are subject to a number of important assumptions. Immigration’s fiscal effects vary tremendously across states.
- https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/braingain_chapter.pdf
Public Benefits
Public Benefits
Immigrants use less public benefits than native citizens
- CATO: Ku and Bruen 13
- Poor Immigrants Use Public Benefits at a Lower Rate than Poor Native-Born Citizens
- MEDICARE/MEDICAID
- More than one quarter of native citizens and naturalized citizens in poverty receive Medicaid, but only about one in five non-citizens do so.
- Immigrants who receive Medicaid or CHIP tend to have lower per beneficiary medical expenditures than native-born people
- SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION
- 33 percent of native citizens, 25 percent of naturalized citizens, and 29 percent of non-citizens received SNAP benefits in 2011’
- SSI / INCOME
- SSI receipt was higher for native and naturalized citizens than non-citizen immigrants.
Deportation
Deportation
From a purely economic perspective, mass deportation of illegal immigrants would severely undermine stability and economic well-being
- New American Economy Factsheet
- Mass deportation of illegal immigrants would result in a:
- 6.4% shrink in the labor force
- 5.7% shrink in the economy
- $1.6 trillion reduction in GDP
- $409 billion direct cost to the federal government
- Gitis & Collins 15 (evidence cited for source above)
- the budgetary and economic implications of alternative strategies to addressing undocumented immigrants.
- $400 billion to $600 billion to address the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants and prevent future unlawful entry into the United States.
- In turn, this would shrink the labor force by 11 million workers and reduce real GDP by $1.6 trillion.
- Depending on how the government conducts its apprehensions, it would need to spend $100 billion to $300 billion arresting and removing all undocumented immigrants residing in the country, a process that we estimate would take 20 years.
- As a result [of the labour shrinkage], 20 years from now the economy would be nearly 6 percent or $1.6 trillion smaller than it would be if the government did not remove all undocumented immigrants.
Significant evidence shows that enforcing deportation policy has either been ineffective in reducing crime or has actually lead to more crime insecurity through decreased crime reporting and deepening gang networks through “free rides”
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Miles & Cox 14 “The first empirical analysis of the most important deportation initiative to be rolled out in decades” finds that a deportation initiative program called “Secure Communities” working through more than 3,000 U.S. counties which affected more than 250,000 illegal immigrants “led to no meaningful reductions in the FBI index crime rate. Nor has it reduced rates of violent crime—homicide, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault. This evidence shows that the program has not served its central objective of making communities safer.”
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Theodore 2013 “A randomized telephone survey of 2,004 Latinos living in the counties of Cook (Chicago), Harris (Houston), Los Angeles, and Maricopa (Phoenix) was conducted to assess the impact of police involvement in immigration enforcement on Latinos’ perceptions of public safety and their willingness to contact the police when crimes have been committed.” They find that “45 percent of Latinos stated that they are less likely to voluntarily offer information about crimes, and 45 percent are less likely to report a crime because they are afraid the police will ask them or people they know about their immigration status.” They also find that “70 percent of undocumented immigrants reported they are less likely to contact law enforcement authorities if they were victims of a crime.”
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Police Foundation: Amendola et al. 08 (cited) A national survey of 54 police chiefs made by the Police Foundation finds that 85% of police chiefs believed “that aggressive enforcement of immigation law would have a negative impact on community relationships by decreasing reporting of crime victimization” While 83% felt the same for its impact on resulted decreased reporting of criminal activity. In addition, 67% of police chiefs believed that it would also have a negative impact on communities by weakening criminal investigations.
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Migration Policy Institute: Capps et al. 11 A report on the effects of 287(g) State and Local Law Immigration Enforcement finds that among the effects of the deportation program was immigrants “having a reluctance to report crimes” due to distrust and fear of authorities.
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Fellow & Lum 13: (And a very good news source for elaboration) One of the most pivotal findings from a report on transnational criminal organizations and Central American gangs finds that one of the most infamously known gangs, MS-13, “is actively seeking to expand its presence around Latin America and Europe through a variety of methods” which primarily included “seeking deportation to countries where they do not yet have a presence in order to begin forming new structures.” Where they “would falsely declare one of those countries as their country of origin when arrested and facing deportation from the United States or elsewhere. Since gang members seldom have travel documents, authorities cannot prove an individual is not from the country he declares as his point of origin. Some of the deportations are reported to be deliberately planned as a way for a selected MS-‐13 member to obtain a ‘free ride’ to a specific country.” Through targeting deportations, the gang is able to deepen their influence through gathering more recruits and resources across countries, only later to come back to the US even bigger than before, and a vicious cycle is born.
Southern Border
Southern Border