So far I've stuck to basketball with my posts, but this blog is not going to just stick to sports.
Donald Trump won the US Presidency in 2016 largely based on claims and arguments he made about immigration.
In his candidacy announcement speech, Trump said:
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
...
"It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably— probably— from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast."
During his Republican National Convention speech, he said:
"Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens. The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015, they are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources.
...
"Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens especially for African-American and Latino workers."
...
"Illegal border crossings will go down. We will stop it. It won’t be happening very much anymore. Believe me. Peace will be restored by enforcing the rules for millions who overstay their visas."
...
"We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities."
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I quote Trump at length here because it is important to understand how central these claims about immigration are to his Presidency. "Make America Great Again" was Trump's campaign slogan, and the primary way that he proposed to do this was by cracking down on immigration. He claimed that immigrants were responsible for increases in crime, for lower wages, and for higher unemployment. He claimed that reducing immigration, building a border wall with Mexico, and cracking down on undocumented "illegal" immigrants would solve these problems.
So what does the data say. This is, after all, a data analysis blog.
Jinkinson Smith of Oglethorpe University released findings in February 2018 that there was no significant correlation between changes in undocumented immigrant population and violent crimes.
Smith used data from the Pew Research Center and the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. Pew Research Center found that there was no significant change in the total number of unauthorized immigrants between 2009 and 2014, but there were 13 states that had significant changes: Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington.
The change in percentage of unauthorized immigrants over the 5 year period was found to be very weakly correlated with the change in violent crime rate for those states (r^2 = 0.0111).
I ran the data myself to check the results and found a slightly different result. This is because the violent crime rates (the sum of Murders, Nonnegligent Manslaughters, Rapes, Robberies, and Aggravated Assaults in a year per 100,000 people) includes two different definitions of rape between 2009 and 2014, and because there was a difference in the Illinois numbers when Smith ran it versus today. I calculated violent crimes using the same rape definition for 2009 and 2014, so that we were comparing apples to apples, and using the currently posted Illinois data. Running the data in this manner produced a slightly higher correlation (r^2 = 0.0319), but again with a negative correlation (r=-0.1786). This means that to the extent there was any correlation (and there was still very little), an increase in unauthorized immigrants meant a decrease in violent crimes.
This study did look at just violent crimes. I ran the numbers for total crimes tracked (the previously listed violent crimes plus Burglary, Larceny, and Motor Vehicle theft). This time there was a slight positive correlation (r=.1682) but the correlation was even weaker than the updated violent crime correlation (r^2 = 0.0283 for Total Crime).
4 other studies have come out in the last year with similar findings. Changes in undocumented immigrant population numbers have almost no correlation to changes in violent crime, nonviolent crime, criminal conviction rates, or arrest rates.
Numerous studies have also shown that undocumented immigrants in the US have little to no impact on wages or employment levels for native citizens (https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23550/the-economic-and-fiscal-consequences-of-immigration, http://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-effects-of-immigration-on-the-united-states-economy, https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers/long, https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrations-real-impact-wages-employment).
To the extent there has been modeling on the potential effects of tightening immigration policy vs. legalization for undocumented immigrants, legalization has actually been shown to decrease the unemployment rate of low-skilled natives and it increases income per native (http://www.nber.org/papers/w19932).
What does all this mean? The entire thesis driving Trump's political rhetoric about immigration is wrong. This rhetoric is central to Trump's political agenda, and sits at the root of much of the action that this administration is taking. Keep this in mind when you're voting in the midterm elections. Seek out candidates that are not recommending policies based on a faulty sense of the impact undocumented immigrants have.
Donald Trump won the US Presidency in 2016 largely based on claims and arguments he made about immigration.
In his candidacy announcement speech, Trump said:
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
...
"It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably— probably— from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast."
During his Republican National Convention speech, he said:
"Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens. The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015, they are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources.
...
"Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens especially for African-American and Latino workers."
...
"Illegal border crossings will go down. We will stop it. It won’t be happening very much anymore. Believe me. Peace will be restored by enforcing the rules for millions who overstay their visas."
...
"We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities."
-
I quote Trump at length here because it is important to understand how central these claims about immigration are to his Presidency. "Make America Great Again" was Trump's campaign slogan, and the primary way that he proposed to do this was by cracking down on immigration. He claimed that immigrants were responsible for increases in crime, for lower wages, and for higher unemployment. He claimed that reducing immigration, building a border wall with Mexico, and cracking down on undocumented "illegal" immigrants would solve these problems.
So what does the data say. This is, after all, a data analysis blog.
Jinkinson Smith of Oglethorpe University released findings in February 2018 that there was no significant correlation between changes in undocumented immigrant population and violent crimes.
Smith used data from the Pew Research Center and the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. Pew Research Center found that there was no significant change in the total number of unauthorized immigrants between 2009 and 2014, but there were 13 states that had significant changes: Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington.
The change in percentage of unauthorized immigrants over the 5 year period was found to be very weakly correlated with the change in violent crime rate for those states (r^2 = 0.0111).
I ran the data myself to check the results and found a slightly different result. This is because the violent crime rates (the sum of Murders, Nonnegligent Manslaughters, Rapes, Robberies, and Aggravated Assaults in a year per 100,000 people) includes two different definitions of rape between 2009 and 2014, and because there was a difference in the Illinois numbers when Smith ran it versus today. I calculated violent crimes using the same rape definition for 2009 and 2014, so that we were comparing apples to apples, and using the currently posted Illinois data. Running the data in this manner produced a slightly higher correlation (r^2 = 0.0319), but again with a negative correlation (r=-0.1786). This means that to the extent there was any correlation (and there was still very little), an increase in unauthorized immigrants meant a decrease in violent crimes.
This study did look at just violent crimes. I ran the numbers for total crimes tracked (the previously listed violent crimes plus Burglary, Larceny, and Motor Vehicle theft). This time there was a slight positive correlation (r=.1682) but the correlation was even weaker than the updated violent crime correlation (r^2 = 0.0283 for Total Crime).
4 other studies have come out in the last year with similar findings. Changes in undocumented immigrant population numbers have almost no correlation to changes in violent crime, nonviolent crime, criminal conviction rates, or arrest rates.
Numerous studies have also shown that undocumented immigrants in the US have little to no impact on wages or employment levels for native citizens (https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23550/the-economic-and-fiscal-consequences-of-immigration, http://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-effects-of-immigration-on-the-united-states-economy, https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers/long, https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrations-real-impact-wages-employment).
To the extent there has been modeling on the potential effects of tightening immigration policy vs. legalization for undocumented immigrants, legalization has actually been shown to decrease the unemployment rate of low-skilled natives and it increases income per native (http://www.nber.org/papers/w19932).
What does all this mean? The entire thesis driving Trump's political rhetoric about immigration is wrong. This rhetoric is central to Trump's political agenda, and sits at the root of much of the action that this administration is taking. Keep this in mind when you're voting in the midterm elections. Seek out candidates that are not recommending policies based on a faulty sense of the impact undocumented immigrants have.
Hey, thanks for looking at the study I did on immigration and crime. I was not aware of the issue of the change in the Illinois data or the issue of the changed definition of rape when I wrote the study, which I largely did to get a feel for how SSRN and the scientific publishing process works. I will try to update the SSRN paper to take these issues into account.
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