Trump Is WRONG! Immigrants are not Criminals - Review of Empirical Studies Discloses the Facts!

There has been a great deal of fervor over statements made by President/Former Reality T.V. Personality, Donald Trump, wherein he has expressed strong views on immigration, including claims that Mexico has sent "criminals and drug traffickers" into the United States. A growing body of modern research reviewing studies on immigrants and crime shows the reality is that both legal and undocumented immigrants to the United States are less prone to criminal behavior than those who are U.S.-born. The paper explains the following:

Abstract: For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime:

(1) immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and

(2) high rates of immigration are associated with lower or stable rates of violent crime and property crime.



The conclusion is that policies vilifying immigrants and the laws derived from such policies create the perception that immigrants are a criminal class within our society. Laws that make people felons for immigration-related offenses, laws that make legal immigration difficult or impossible for those with minor criminal offenses or past immigration violations, work to turn immigrants into criminals. The research into the correlation of crime and being an immigrant, however, continues to show that, absent laws directed at them as immigrants, immigrants are less prone to criminal behavior than U.S. citizens as a class.