Does Immigration Cause Crime? Evidence from the United States

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Date
2018-08
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Abstract
Donald Trump announced that immigration should be responsible for higher crime incidents in the United States, and he in turn aimed to strengthen his anti-immigrant policies. Recently, his entire anti-immigrant agenda has triggered debates all over the United States. There are not too many previous studies focusing on empirical evidence, and they have never reached a consensus. This paper investigates the relationship between three kinds of immigration and crime in different regional groups to provide an updated assessment, including unauthorized immigrants, foreign population and Mexican unauthorized immigrants. State level cross-sectional data in 2014 is analyzed using multivariate regression. The results of the regression analysis reveal that immigration has significantly positive effects on violent crime. Compared with foreign population, the influence of unauthorized immigration appears to be stronger. Compared with foreign population and Mexican unauthorized immigrants, the influence of unauthorized immigration appears to be stronger. Contrary to inland state group, the study reveals that immigration accounts for crime. The evidence in fact shows that poverty rate increases the amount of violent crime and crime rate significantly. In the end, the findings provide important implications for the concerned authorities and policymakers.
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immigration, crime, unauthorized immigration, foreign population
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