Immigration Numbers and Patterns in the United States

The United States is the third most populous nation in the world, with a 2019 estimated population of 328.6 million people; there are about 44.5 million immigrants who comprise over 13% of the nation’s population.¹

In general, the United States has been adding about 1 million immigrants each year since 1990; and in 2013, there were over 13 million immigrants with permanent residency status. The most populous U.S. states are California (about 39 million), Texas (about 27 million), Florida (about 20 million), New York (about 20 million), and Illinois (about 13 million). These states also have the highest number of immigrants (Migration Policy Institute, n.d.b). California, New York, Texas, and Florida account for 60% of the foreign-born population. While it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of undocumented immigrants, various agencies (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, PEW Research Center, and the Center for Migration Studies) estimate the number of immigrants who either came into the United States illegally or overstayed their visas to be between 11 and 11.5 million people (Sherman, 2015; U.S. Census Bureau, 2014). Between 2010 and 2014, foreign-born persons were about 13% of the total U.S. population (Figure 1).

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Figure 1. Size of the lawful permanent resident population.Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.

Source: B. Baker & N. Rytina. (2014). Estimates of the Lawful Permanent Resident Population in the United States: January 2013. Population Estimates. Office of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security.

In the early 20th century, the majority of immigrants to the United States came from Europe. Immigration changes since the early 20th century have been marked by changes in country of origin and other demographic characteristics. By 2014, the percentage of Europeans living in the United States had decreased from a high, in 1960, of 60% of the foreign-born immigrants in the United States to 11% (Zong & Batalova, 2015). Most European immigrants (62%) have become naturalized citizens; although only 44% of the total foreign-born population presently in the United States have been naturalized (Grieco et al., 2012). Many new immigrants are coming from Asia, Central and South America, Africa, and the Middle East. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2014), about 35% of the foreign-born population in the United States came since 2000. About 75% of foreign-born persons in the United States are married and are between the ages of 18 and 44. Immigrants have higher birth rates than native-born women in the United States. Between 2009 and 2010, 70.3 per 1,000 foreign-born women gave birth within the preceding year, compared to 51.5 per 1,000 native-born women. The Migration Policy Institute (2015) estimates that “Immigrants and their U.S.-born children now number approximately 80 million persons, or one-quarter of the total U.S. population.”² By 2018, according to Zong, Batalova, and Burrows (2019), many immigrants who entered the United States had a college degree, and many were from Asia and Mexico. In 2019, the United States witnessed the largest number of immigrants arriving at the southern border seeking asylum; many of these immigrants traveled through Mexico from their home nations, seeking work and safety from violence." In March (2019), there were more than 92,000 arrests of undocumented migrants for illegal entry on the southern border, up from 37,390 in March 2018—the majority of whom were families, according to data from Customs and Border Protection” (Alvarez, 2019). According to a New York Times report, the immigration system in the United States may be at its breaking point because tens of thousands of persons are seeking to enter the United States at the nation’s southern border (Shear, Jordan, & Fernandez, 2019). The United States immigration courts have over 800,000 pending claims from immigrants who want to enter and remain in the nation; their cases are taking an average of 700 days to process (Shear et al., 2019). In April 2019, President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency. President Trump said “The system is full. We can’t take you anymore. Whether it’s asylum, whether it’s anything you want, it’s illegal migration, we can’t take you anymore. Our country is full, our area’s full, the sector is full. We can’t take you anymore, I’m sorry, can’t happen. So turn around, that’s the way it is” (Shear et al., 2019).

Crime Rate Numbers and Patterns in the United States

Arrest, sentencing, and incarceration rates have been changing in the late the 20th and early 21st centuries. Since reaching an all-time high in both violent and property crime in the mid-1990s, the numbers and rate of violent and property crime in the United States have been steadily declining (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015a), while the incarceration rate, until very recently, had been increasing. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (2018), arrests decreased 20% between 2005 and 2015; between 2013 and 2014, violent crime arrests decreased 0.2%, and property crime arrests decreased 4.3%. In 2014, more offenders were arrested for drug crimes (1,561,231) than property crimes (1,553,980) and violent crimes (498,666) (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015b). The states with the highest violent and property crime rates are neither the most populous nor do they house the largest number of immigrants. In 2015, the states with the highest reported crime rates were: Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Tennessee, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arkansas, Delaware, and Missouri (Frohlich, Stebbins, & Sauter, 2015). In the United States, places with the largest increases in population have been associated with the largest decreases in crime rates in the past decade. The majority of arrestees in 2014 were white (69%) and male (73%) (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015c). In sampled U.S. cities, Stowell, Messner, McGeever, and Raffalovich (2009) found that as the foreign-born, immigrant population in the cities went up, the violent crime rate went down (Figure 2).

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Figure 2. Comparison of NCVS (SAE) and NCVS direct violent crime rates to the national averages, 1997–2011.

Source: U.S. crime rates 1960–2014. 2012 rate per 100,000 and rank by state of crime and imprisonment by U.S. states.

The incarceration rate in the United States is the highest in the world. In 2016, there were about 2.2 million incarcerated offenders in jails and prisons; a national incarceration rate of 655 inmates per 100,000 persons (Gramlich, 2018). According to Gramlich (2018), after the United States, the nations with the highest incarceration rates are El Salvador (614 per 100,000 people), Turkmenistan (583 per 100,000 people), Maldives (514 per 100,000 people), Cuba (510 per 100,000 people), and Russia (415 per 100,000 people).

Between 2005 and 2010, the increase in incarceration within the United States was higher among U.S. citizens (16% increase) than among foreign-born persons (7% increase; Government Accounting Office, 2011). The Minton & Sabol (2009) reported that, between 2000 and 2008, the population of foreign-born/non-U.S. citizens housed in all U.S. jails was between 6% and 9% of all detainees. The estimated number of persons held in U.S. jails decreased 1% in 2012, from a high in 2010 of 748,700, to 744,500 detainees; the estimated number of persons incarcerated in U.S. prisons decreased 2%, from 1,521,400 inmates in 2010 to 1,483,900 inmates in 2012 (Glaze & Herberman, 2013). According to Mauer and King (2007), the sentencing of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States is disproportionate. While the disproportionate sentencing of African Americans has been documented for many years, Mauer and King (2007) noted that there has been a disproportionate increase in the number of Hispanic persons sentenced in state and federal prisons. They found that, in 2005, Hispanics comprised 20% of the U.S. prison population, an increase of 45% since 1990 (see Figures 3 and 4).

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Figure 3. Number of Criminal Aliens and U.S. Citizens Incarcerated in Federal Prisons from Fiscal Years 2005 through 2010. Source: Government Accounting Office (March 2011): Figure 1: Number of criminal aliens and U.S. citizens incarcerated in federal prisons from fiscal years 2005 through 2010.

Source: Report to Congressional Requesters: Criminal Alien Statistics: Information on Incarcerations, Arrests, and Costs. GAO-11-187. GAO analysis of BOP data.

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Figure 4. Foreign-born population in prison. Note: Share of prisoners shows the percentage of prisoners who are foreign-born, while share of population shows the percentage of the general population who are foreign-born.

Source: B. Bell, F. Fasani, & S. Machin. (2013, November 13). Crime and Immigration: Evidence for the UK and Other Countries. The Migration Observatory, University of Oxford. OCED 2007.

Immigration, Social Disorganization, and Social Control

When crime rates rise, criminologists attempt to explain them with community and neighborhood factors. Early 20th-century social disorganization theory suggested that crime was the result of a criminogenic foreign-born class who experienced the effects of strain and economic deprivation. Shaw and McKay (1942) addressed the rise in crime in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. They posited that if urban communities experienced an increase in population, an increase of persons living in poverty, and a decrease in the community’s racial and ethnic homogeneity, then crime would increase in areas with the most social disorganization. Because cities at that time experienced increased immigrant populations, it was believed that the spike in inner-city crime was due to the presence of immigrants.

Social disorganization has continued to serve as an explanation for crime in socially diverse neighborhoods. Sampson and Raudenbush (2004) analyzed the concept of broken windows in order to ascertain if a community’s view (perception) of social disorder is shaped by racial bias. Utilizing four data sets for Chicago’s neighborhood blocks in the 1990s, Sampson and Raudenbush found that how community residents and leaders viewed their neighborhood was influenced by the community’s racial composition. They suggest that negative perceptions of neighborhoods are shaped by racial bias rather than by observations of disorder. In this regard, Latinos (a large number of whom were Mexican immigrants) in Chicago perceived their neighborhoods to have significantly more social disorder when the neighborhood was at least a 25% African American. Sampson and Raudenbush (2004) could not fully explain the finding but suggested that residents and community leaders are primed to see social disorder in areas that have both poverty and a heterogeneous racial composition; new immigrants might thereby view these neighborhoods as having more disorder than is actually occurring, due to historic perceptions about crime, race, and social disorder.

Ferraro (2016) examined the effect on crime in areas that experienced a recent increase in immigrants. Utilizing Uniform Crime Reports and census data for over 1,200 locations and 194 so-called “new destination communities” for Latinos between 2000 and 2007, Ferraro tested the hypothesis that communities that had large increases in foreign-born persons would have greater increases in crime. By focusing on recent immigrants, Ferraro indicated that he would be able to test social disorganization for those immigrants who might experience the most tumultuous social changes in a city and to determine if they would be responsible for crime spikes; in other words, would recent immigrants be prone to committing crime? Ferraro found mixed results in his test of social disorganization theory. While the rise in social disadvantage was positively associated with an increase in crime, changes in the immigrant population in a community were not associated with an increase in crime. Instead, places with more recent immigrants had larger decreases in property crime. Ferraro (2016) suggested that other theoretical perspectives showing that recent immigrants may be drawn to communities where they have social ties and employment prospects may mediate against social disorganization factors that presuppose criminal behavior in a community undergoing social change.

By analyzing national crime data and census tract data across 40 years (1970 through 2010), Adelman, Reid, Markle, Weiss, and Jaret (2017) found that immigration was consistently linked with declines in both violent and property crimes (specifically, murder, robbery, larceny, and burglary). They found that, as the foreign-born population increased by 1%, violent crime went down by 5 crimes and property crimes went down by 99 crimes. They concluded that the relationship between immigration and crime is complex and requires more analysis. Immigration is not just about the persons who immigrate, it might be about the neighborhoods in which people reside upon immigration. Kubrin, Hipp, and Kim (2018) found that there is a rich diversity among immigrants and the communities in which they live in the southern part of the state of California. By analyzing crime data between 2009 and 2011 and coding neighborhoods by census tracks, they found that a significant relationship did not exist between violent crime and immigrant concentration; although they did find that violent crime was higher in Latino communities (immigrants from Mexico and Central America) and communities with immigrants from Russia, the Ukraine, and Israel. When they analyzed property crime data, Asian immigrants (Chinese) had low property crime rates when compared to immigrants from what Kubrin et al. (2018) termed the New World group of immigrants (persons who came to the United States from Italy, Cuba, and Ecuador). These analyses did not look at who committed the crimes and who were the victims—they only considered crime rates by comparing neighborhoods with various levels of immigrant concentrations. These studies suggest some support for the proposition that immigrants can revive neighborhoods.

Crime Commission and Immigration

With more refined data analysis, 21st-century criminologists are able to test the hypothesis that immigrants commit a large proportion of crime relative to their population in a community. To determine if foreign-born persons commit crimes in a variety of communities, Vélez and Lyons (2012) analyzed the relationship between crime and immigration in multiple U.S. cities. Vélez and Lyons used the National Neighborhood Crime survey to test whether disadvantaged neighborhoods with large numbers of immigrants have more crime because of economic deprivation or are able to abate crime if immigrants have access to social agencies that can provide social support. In 2000, they studied 69 cities that had populations larger than 100,000, and they found differences in crime patterns when municipalities were distinguished as being either a gateway or a traditional city. Gateway cities have large numbers of newly arriving immigrants who, despite the economic disadvantages in the neighborhoods where they reside, have access to more resources to help them with their transition. In gateway communities, the amount of crime did not necessarily increase or decrease within the established immigrant neighborhoods. The researchers found that the infusion of social control agents (social support) was a protective factor against immigrants’ engaging in or committing crime. They posited that, rather than destabilizing communities, immigrants can create a stabilizing force in large cities when contextualized by neighborhood.

Stansfield, Akins, Rumbaut, and Hammer (2013) considered whether increased immigration in the city had an impact on serious property crime in Austin, Texas. They posited that having a “vibrant co-ethnic” community could be a protective factor against property crime. Using Austin city tract-level analysis and the city police department’s crime records from 2004 to 2006, Stansfield et al. (2013) found no relationship between new immigration and serious property crime rates. They posited that the new arrivals might have revitalized neighborhoods by causing a bottom-up growth among Mexican immigrant commercial enterprises in the city. Thus, an increase in immigrants in the city’s tracts where high concentrations of new arrivals lived did not increase the crimes of burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft.

Ferraro (2014) analyzed the relationship between crime and immigration between 2000 and 2010 using Uniform Crime Report data. Ferraro found that, although U.S. cities experienced an increase in their populations during the 10-year period, there was a decrease in the overall crime rate and a reduction in both in violent and property crime. He found, similar to Vélez and Lyons (2012) and Stansfield et al. (2013), that crime was not associated with cities that had large immigration populations, regardless of whether there were long-established immigrant communities in the city, or if there were large foreign-born immigrant settlements formed within the previous five years. He suggested that the largest predictor of crime is socioeconomic disadvantage, rather than increased population or the number of immigrants living in a community.

Violent Crime and Immigration

Some people are concerned that immigrants are violent and engage in particular types of violent crime. To address this concern, Martinez, Lee, and Nielson (2004) studied drug and homicide crime in Miami, Florida, and in San Diego, California, to determine if there is a relationship between violent crime and immigration. Although both cities have large Hispanic and immigration populations, Martinez et al. (2004) found that foreign-born persons were not responsible for the communities’ drug and violent crime. The increase in crime was associated with second-generation youth, who were more likely to be involved in homicides related to drug offending in both communities. According to the researchers, segmented assimilation among second-generation youth can explain criminal patterns, since Mexican American youth in poor neighborhoods, despite cultural assimilation, committed violent crimes. If, however, immigrant families had economic stability (e.g., jobs), their offspring were not likely to engage in drug-related homicides.

Martinez, Stowell, and Lee (2010) analyzed the relationship between homicide and immigration in San Diego during periods of major increases in the foreign-born population (1980–2000). They wanted to test the immigrant paradox. The paradox is that despite social disorganization theory’s prediction that people living in socially disorganized neighborhoods will have higher crime rates, communities with large immigrant populations have lower levels of crime. Martinez et al. (2010) posited that immigrants exhibit strong social controls (education and mental health attributes) and rejuvenate neighborhoods that had been previously considered to be high-crime inner-city communities. While the researchers found that socially disorganized neighborhoods experienced increases in homicides, they also found that, when communities had an influx of immigrants, there were fewer homicides. Their findings suggest that while certain neighborhoods foster crime, if recent immigrants settle in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, the impact on the violent crime rate can be nullified.

Vélez (2009) studied homicide offenses in Chicago. She compared city neighborhoods that had dense populations of white, Hispanic, and African American residents and the homicide rates within these neighborhoods and found that homicide rates are significantly higher in African American neighborhoods and are closely associated with neighborhoods with a concentrated disadvantaged population. Neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage are those with a large percentage of residents with incomes below the poverty line, limited employment of residents age 16 and older, many female head-of-household families, and high unemployment. She found that, in areas where there were large populations of recent immigrants, the number of homicides decreased. Vélez (2009) attributed this finding to the reinvigoration of neighborhoods when new immigrants arrived. She suggested that the new arrivals arguably want to strengthen ties with their neighbors, increase community organizations, and improve the local economy.

Sampson, Morenoff, and Raudenbush (2005) analyzed data for Chicago between 1995 and 2002 to determine if ethnic and racial differences in neighborhoods account for residents’ engaging in violence. They found that age, recent immigration status, and ethnicity matters when analyzing crimes of violence. Youth in all race and ethnic groups are more likely to engage in violence, and the level of violence peaks at ages 17 or 18. In addition, they found that recent immigrants engaged in less violence than their offspring; third-generation immigrants had higher levels of violence than second-generation, and second-generation immigrants had higher levels of violence than first-generation immigrants. When considering race and ethnicity, African Americans had higher levels of violence than whites, and whites had higher levels of violence than Mexican Americans, even when controlling for neighborhood composition. Neighborhoods matter: if a neighborhood had a higher level of violence prior to changed social demographics (changes in the immigrant population), then the odds that persons in the neighborhood would engage in violence were significantly higher than in other neighborhoods.

Ousey and Kubrin (2014) also looked at the relationship between homicides and immigration. They analyzed Uniform Crime Report data from 156 cities for four specific years and covering four decades (1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010). To determine if various subtypes of homicide were related to immigration status, Ousey and Kubrin distinguished among homicide offenses committed due to an argument (lovers’ triangle, money, brawls related to alcohol or drugs), drug-related offenses (narcotics buying, selling, or distribution), and gang-related offenses (youth gang and gangland killings). They presupposed that certain subtypes of homicide would be associated with immigration status (cities with a percentage of foreign-born and Hispanic residents). In general, they found that cities with increases in recent immigrants had the lowest rates of homicide. Ousey and Kubrin (2014) also found that cities with above-average immigration populations also experienced sharp decreases in all subtypes of homicide.

Gostjev and Nielsen (2017) analyzed English language fluency and the presence bilingual Spanish speakers in 91 large cities in the United States to determine if there is a relationship between fluency and the violent crime rates of homicide and robbery. Using census tract data and the National Neighborhood Crime Study data between the years 1999 and 2001, Gostjev & Nielsen found that there is a non-linear relationship between non-fluency and violent crime. They found differing levels of significance between fluency and violent crime when they controlled for type of neighborhood (traditional or new destination), communities with youth who are bilingual, and type of crime (homicide or robbery). Levels of fluency and bilingualism can shape community cohesion in traditional and new destination neighborhoods. In regard to homicide offenses, homicides rates were attenuated when communities had more bilingual speakers, although there was not a significant difference between homicide rates in traditional or new communities and the presence of English non-fluent/bilingual speakers. For robbery crimes, violent crime rates were impacted by immigrant concentrations in neighborhoods with economic disadvantage, residential instability, community heterogeneity, and a higher percentage of male youth. Overall, Gostjev and Nielsen (2017, p. 133) concluded “that greater levels of English nonfluency were associated with higher levels of violence until such English nonfluency concentrations reached certain levels.” Their findings suggest that, in regard to homicide and robbery offenses, the inability of residents to speak English affects violent crime; as more youth begin to speak English, then violent crime might be ameliorated until a community becomes more heterogeneous and there are more adult bilingual residents.

Generational Patterns, Immigration, and Crime

Studies on immigration and crime should consider generational patterns of crime. The so-called immigrant paradox was found to apply to juvenile immigrants. Desmond (2009), in a study using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, analyzed whether communities with a high concentration of immigrant youth had increased violent crime levels. He found that when immigrant children are compared with their nonimmigrant peers, the immigrant youth are less violent and have better academic, social, and psychological adjustment scores. As with other researchers who considered the paradox, Desmond (2009) found that, despite perceptions to the contrary, immigrant youth have fewer deviant behaviors (fewer violent crime behaviors) than native-born persons. In particular, he found that immigrant Hispanic and Asian youth had lower levels of violence than their nonimmigrant peers. However, he also found that foreign-born black youth were more likely to engage in violence than their native-born black peers. Thus, while immigration reduces violent crime in communities with a concentration of immigrant youth, the protective effect of high immigrant populations may not apply to all immigrant groups or communities.

Sampson (2008) similarly found support for a Latino paradox in that communities that had the lowest violent crime rates in the United States had the most diverse neighborhoods. He stated: “Notably, we found a significantly lower rate of violence among Mexican-Americans compared to blacks and whites. . . . In particular, first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) were 45% less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans, adjusting for individual, family, and neighborhood background” (Sampson, 2008, p. 29). Sampson contended that immigrants can promote social controls even in extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods; in this manner, immigration can cause violent crime rates to go down.

To understand the effect of immigration on behavior, Salas-Wright, Vaughn, Schwartz, and Córdova (2015) compared immigrant youth and U.S.-born youth to determine if they experience different externalizing behaviors due to moderating factors like cohesive parental relationships, positive school engagement, and negative views on drug use. Salas-Wright et al. found that, with the exception of fighting behaviors, recent immigrant youth were less likely to self-report criminal behaviors than similarly situated groups of youth born in the United States. The differences between the youth, according to Salas-Wright et al. (2015), can be attributed to the immigrant youth’s having more prosocial support from their parents and schools. The researchers’ finding was consistent no matter whether the immigrant youth were recent arrivals or had come to the United States over 5 years before the study and as young children.

Bersani, Loughran, and Piquero (2014) studied the transitional time period from adolescence into adulthood to determine if immigrants and their offspring living in disadvantaged neighborhoods will have more risk or protective factors for crime. Using data from the Pathways to Desistance study, Bersani et al. (2014) looked at youth who were convicted of a serious crime and age 14 to 17 at baseline in two counties (Maricopa County, Arizona, and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania). They collected data on the youths’ recidivism over 36 months to ascertain if there is a difference in immigration–crime trajectories among youth who were more assimilated than those who were less assimilated in their communities. The researchers found less reoffending among first-generation immigrants than among second-generation youth. The study found that immigration status can be a buffer against serious crime or offending behavior, and most of the first-generation youth offenders were early or low desisters. Among second-generation immigrant youth, if they lived in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood, then the social disorganization of the place where they resided could have been a possible intervening variable that explained persistent offending behaviors regardless of race or ethnicity. Bersani et al. (2014) concluded that it is important to study how adolescent immigrants acculturate into a community, particularly if it has high crime rates and other factors associated with social disadvantage.

Bersani and Piquero (2017) confirmed the generational effects of immigration and crime by considering whether there is a bias in crime reporting. They wanted to know whether the immigrants might be less likely to report crime than non-immigrants. To test the bias hypothesis, they analyzed self-reported crime and official crime data for first generation (immigrants born outside the United States), second generation (having at least one parent who is foreign born) and third generation (both parents born in the United States) youth across seven years of longitudinal data collected in two counties as part of the Pathways to Desistance Study. All youth had been initially arrested for a crime and then had follow-up survey waves from their youth into early adulthood. The majority of immigrant youth in their sample were Hispanic (Mexican in Maricopa County and Puerto Rican in Philadelphia County). While the youth all had similar baseline arrest rates regardless of generational status, the mean arrest rates for each successive generation went up over time. Even when controlling for age, gender, race, ethnicity, criminal history, and the time a person was incarcerated, Bersani and Piquero (2017) found that first-generation immigrants were associated with less self-reported offending and self-reported arrests. Interestingly, they found that first and second-generation immigrants might over-report offending behavior when compared to official arrest data. Thus, foreign-born immigrants are not likely to have a bias in reporting crime to the police.

In a unique analysis of how immigrant neighborhood concentration can be a protective factor on youth offending, Wolff, Intravia, Baglivio, and Piquero (2018) analyzed data on youthful offenders in the State of Florida. Wolff et al. utilized youth community-based supervision data collected by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice between 2009 and 2012. Their sample consisted of 26,242 youth who had a full risk/need assessment. Each youth was individually tracked for 365 days (one year) from the time that they were placed on supervision and their recidivism was recorded; 25% of the sample recidivated. In their analysis of who recidivated and who did not, Wolff et al. found that neighborhoods in which the youth lived mattered; neighborhoods with high immigrant concentrations was significantly related to lower recidivism and neighborhoods with high concentrations of disadvantage were significantly related to recidivism. When addressing individual mediators to recidivism, the researchers found that communities with “higher levels of immigrant concentration were associated with a greater number of youth living with both of their parents . . . and fewer youth who have parents with a history of being incarcerated. . . . At the same time, areas with higher levels of disadvantage were significantly inversely related to living with both parents as well as familial incarceration history” (Wolff et al., 2018, p. 1287).

Illegal Immigration and Crime

Despite recent research that shows the lack of a direct connection between immigration and increases in crime, the American public still believes that immigrants are dangerous. The studies analyzed in this article looked at overall immigration and did not specifically address the portion of crime associated with illegal immigration. Illegal immigration occurs when a person unlawfully enters the United States or overstays their visa once in the country. The perception that all undocumented immigrants have nefariously crossed the U.S. border may not be accurate; it is estimated that between 30% and 50% of undocumented immigrants in the United States have overstayed their visas (Blondell, 2008; Metcalf, 2011). According to the Migration Policy Institute (n.d.a), the number of unauthorized persons residing in the United States is about 11,300,000; slightly more than half of these persons are from Mexico (53%), and most of the persons who are over 16 years of age are employed (10,491,000 or 67%). More refined analysis regarding legal and illegal immigration and crime has been done by researchers in recent years (Migration Policy Institute, n.d.a).

Researchers in the United States have begun to distinguish between the act of being an undocumented immigrant, which is illegal, and crimes committed by immigrants. Metcalf (2011), for example, found that if an undocumented immigrant is processed by an immigration court for deportation, deportation is most likely to actually occur if the person committed a serious felony. Under federal law, a serious felony for deportation purposes includes misdemeanors with a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year (Medrano, 2018). Immigrants who are subject to deportation can be detained without bond (Nielsen v. Preape, 2019) and without periodic bond release hearings (Jennings v. Rodriguez, 2018).

To analyze whether illegal immigrants commit a large number of crimes that require police attention, Koper, Guterbock, Woods, Taylor, and Carter (2013) analyzed how law enforcement in one Virginia county was affected when the police enforced illegal immigration laws. Koper et al. asserted that, although research shows that immigrants do not commit as many crimes as do native-born persons, if the numbers of illegal immigrants increases then there will be, numerically, more crime committed by this population of persons. The researchers found that policy changes implemented by the police led to an increase in the number of illegal immigrants who were charged with misdemeanor crimes. Although increased arrests and deportations might reasonably be expected to result in a decrease in the overall crime rate, Koper et al. (2013) found a reduction only in aggravated assault crimes in the county studied. The researchers speculated that the one county saw a reduced aggravated assault crime rate because the police announced that they were going to enforce arrests of illegal immigrants who committed crimes. The researchers thought that illegal immigrants did not wish to come to the attention of the police and consequently did not report the assault victimization. Concern about crimes committed on or near the U.S. border has also resulted in some studies about the nexus among migration, victimization, and criminal offending. Hickman and Suttorp (2015) analyzed whether undocumented immigrants were more likely to be a recidivist one year after release from jail than nondeportable immigrants. Analyzing a month of data from the Los Angeles County Jail in 2002, they found that 21% of inmates were foreign born. For those whose immigration status was known, and for which the inmate was not released to another agency, about 60% of the inmates were nondeportable, and 40% were deportable immigrants. One year after release from the county jail, deportable immigrants were no more a threat to public safety than immigrants who were nondeportable (Hickman & Suttorp, 2015). Hickman and Suttorp concluded that the fear that undocumented immigrants are a disproportionate threat to a community’s safety is not empirically supported by analysis of data for the immigrants subjected to criminal justice sanctions at a local jail level. The re-arrest rate for all the immigrants (both deportable and nondeportable) in their study was relatively low (about 38%). In Texas, analysis of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s crime data show that undocumented immigrants commit less crime than persons born in the United States. According to Nowrasteh (2018), the 2015 Texas criminal conviction rates for native born persons are higher than that of immigrants, whether the immigrants are legally or illegally in the United States; native born individuals were convicted of 409,708 crimes, undocumented immigrants were convicted of 15,803 crimes, and legal immigrants were convicted of 17,785 crimes. The rates of criminal convictions were 1,797 per 100,000 native born persons, 899 convictions per 100,000 undocumented immigrants, and about 611 convictions per 100,000 legal immigrants in 2015.³ Nowrasteh found that, while undocumented immigrants comprised about 6.4% of the Texas State population, in 2015, they accounted for 5.9% of all homicide convictions, while native born persons comprised 83% of the state population and were convicted of 90.3% of all homicides. Similarly, lower rates for criminal convictions for sex offenses (69% lower) and thefts (77% lower) were found for undocumented immigrants than for native born individuals. Katz, Fox, and White (2011) analyzed the relationship between immigration status and drug use in Maricopa County, Arizona. In their study, 12% of the recently jailed arrestees were illegal immigrants, 4% were legal immigrants, and the remainder were U.S. citizens. The majority of legal and illegal immigrants were Hispanic males, while U.S. citizens were mainly white (45%) males. Katz et al. also found that the illegal immigrant arrestees in their study were significantly more likely than the other groups of arrestees to be married, employed, and not involved in violence at the time of their arrest; they were also unlikely to receive income from illegal activity, and they had fewer prior arrests than the legal immigrants and U.S. citizens. Additionally, there was a significant relationship between immigration status and drug and alcohol use across time (past 3 days, past 30 days, or past year) and across measures (self-report and urinalysis). They specifically found that legal immigrants and U.S. citizens were significantly more likely to “self-report and test positive for marijuana, crack cocaine, opiates, methamphetamine, and any illicit drug” than illegal immigrants (Katz et al., 2011, p. 555); illegal immigrants were significantly more likely to test positive for powder cocaine than legal immigrants and U.S. citizens. In addition, U.S. citizens were more likely to report drug use than both legal and illegal immigrants. Thus, despite the conventional wisdom that illegal immigrants are involved with drugs, Katz et al. did not find this to be the case. By distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants, the researchers were able to dispel some stereotypes about illegal immigrants, but they indicated that more analysis on the context of the arrest and how the police respond to arresting illegal immigrants needed to be done. Because Katz et al. (2011) studied arrestees who were booked into the local county jail who self-reported their immigration status, the findings should not be generalized to all arrestees or to other communities in the United States. Orrick, Compofelice, and Piquero (2016) used propensity score matching to determine if an inmate’s deportable immigration status impacted the offender’s sentence. They analyzed incarceration data from a sample of inmates confined in 2008. They found that deportable inmates received significantly shorter sentences than inmates in the non-deportable group; however, no significant difference occurred if the inmates received life or death sentences. They conclude that their findings “cast some doubts on the minority threat” view that immigrants are a dangerous group (Orrick et al., 2016, p. 36). To further understand if there is a nexus between violent crime and undocumented immigration, Light and Miller (2018) utilized national data sets (Uniform Crime Reporting [UCR], National Crime Victimization Survey [NCVS], migration data bases, census data, and state level data that cover 24 years of crime and victimization data [1990 through 2014]). They utilized variables derived from competing theories: social disorganization, marginalization, and cultural diffusion (social supports available to undocumented immigrants in neighborhoods that are ethnic enclaves). By analyzing a variety of theoretically derived models, Light & Miller were able to confirm results from prior research that found that immigration and undocumented immigration are negatively associated with increases in violent crime. To the contrary, they found that legal and undocumented immigration “may contribute to lower rates of violent crime” (Light & Miller, 2018, p. 375). Additionally, to address a concern that the lower rates of violent crime might be due to the failure of immigrants to report crime, analysis of data from NCVS was analyzed. They concluded that, whether using UCR or NCVS data, immigration and undocumented immigration are associated with less crime, not just less reporting of crime. In analyzing the types of crimes committed by citizens and noncitizens along the United States and Mexican border, Sibila, Pollock, and Menard (2017) analyzed federal prosecutions in the U.S. District Courts in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. They analyzed federal crimes involving homicide, assault, robbery, marijuana, hard drugs, and weapons between 2007 and 2010 in the USMS Prisoner Tracking System database. The time period selected is important because during the time frame there was a crack-down on Mexican cartel violence in Mexico, and media reports suggested that there was some spillover violence in the United States. Sibila et al. found that regardless of the offense, with the exception of a drug offense, noncitizens were not the strongest predictor of an arrest; on the contrary, arrests for homicide, assault, and weapons were statistically associated with being both male and a U.S. citizen. Noncitizen arrests were statistically associated with only one crime, marijuana. Interestingly, federal marijuana arrests were statistically associated with being both female and a noncitizen. They conclude that traditional criminological theories (e.g., social disorganization) do not explain the results; rather, immigration revitalization may be supported by their findings, since the majority of arrests are of citizens and the area studied has a large majority of noncitizens (an estimated 4.7 million undocumented immigrants in 2010).

Perceptions About Immigrants and Crime

When nations blur the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, the distinctions between administrative law and criminal law are confounded. These nations may treat immigrants who seek entry or who are to be removed as violent offenders or terrorists. Consequently, the citizens of those nations may also confuse distinctions between crime and the threats to public safety that immigrants may pose.

Public opinion polls indicate that the American public believes that undocumented immigrants should be deported and that the federal government should do something to stop illegal border crossing (Chiricos, Stupi, Stults, & Gertz, 2014). Chiricos et al. assessed whether the perception that immigrants are a threat to the U.S. economy and culture supports social policies to control immigration. They conducted a random telephone survey in 2008 that had more than 1,500 respondents. They found that interviewees who thought that illegal immigrants threatened their cultural and economic security were more likely to favor enhanced border security and internal controls on immigrants. However, when respondents lived in communities with higher numbers of Latino residents, the perceived threats to cultural and economic security were mediated. Desmond and Kubrin (2009) argued that immigrant-concentrated communities, particularly those with high concentrations of Hispanic immigrants, have residents who can refute the idea that immigrants are dangerous as a group, and they asserted that the public needs to be better informed about the relationship between immigration and crime.

Sohoni and Sohoni (2014) analyzed the public discourse on immigration and crime. They found that public consumers of news media linked immigration to crime along three topics of public discourse: public services and resources, government responsibility, and the economy and labor market. The respondents in their study did not complain that immigrants are a criminal class; rather, they complained about the impact that immigrants had on the limited, taxpayer-supported resources in a community. The public complained that the government did not do enough to restrict services to immigrants and complained that employers were hiring them for their cheap labor and thereby aiding and abetting illegal immigration. Thus, the researchers found that the general public’s rhetoric against immigrants was not just that immigrants committed crimes, but that their illegal presence in the United States was a crime that needed to be addressed. Confounding the issue of immigration and crime, according to Sohoni and Sohoni (2014), is that the public used the terms Hispanics and illegal immigrants interchangeably and assumed that all Hispanic immigrants had undocumented status.

Wang (2012) considered the perception that undocumented immigrants in the United States pose a criminal threat. She analyzed telephone survey data from four southwestern states (Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas) to determine if, in communities with high levels of undocumented Hispanic persons, the Hispanics were viewed as a threat by the majority population. Wang found that respondents who had a distorted view of the relative size of the undocumented immigrant population in their community perceived the undocumented immigrants to be a criminal threat. In finding that the native-born respondents manifested a minority threat perspective, Wang (2012) concluded that the respondents in the southwestern states were worried about two types of threats that were difficult to disentangle: the ethnic threat of Hispanics (native born or immigrants) and the undocumented immigrant threat. These perceived threats can result in proposals to enhance United States–Mexico border security.

Stupi, Chiricos, and Gerz (2016) conducted a national random telephone survey to assess whether U.S. citizens perceived immigrants to be a threat in general, or only if they want to come into the country and illegally cross the border. Stupi et al. found that the perception of the immigration threat differed along adults’ demographic characteristics. Conservative adults were more likely than liberals to perceive undocumented immigrants to be a criminal threat; persons with lower incomes and educational attainment levels were more likely to perceive immigrants as a criminal threat than those with higher levels of income or education; persons living along the border with Mexico were more likely to perceive a threat from immigrants wanting to come into the United States than those who are already residing in the nation; and the perceived imminent threat by undocumented immigrants is the strongest predictor of citizens’ wanting to have strong policy measures to secure the border. It is important not to look at just immigration and crime within the United States but to consider issues regarding the movement of peoples across borders. As Stupi et al.’s (2016) research shows, it is important to distinguish between undocumented immigrants who reside in a nation and policy recommendations based on the desired need of future immigrants.

State policy preferences to proscribe the status of being undocumented have become politicized. Zingher (2014) found, for example, that Republican-controlled state legislatures are significantly more likely to adopt new laws to target undocumented immigrants than Democratic-controlled state legislatures. The ability to pass immigration enforcement laws was also positively associated with Republican-controlled legislatures in states where the Republican Party was very conservative. However, the passage of such bills was unlikely to occur in Republican-controlled legislatures in states that had a large Latino population in the voting electorate; the exception to this finding was Arizona.

The Illegality of Being an Undocumented Immigrant

Immigration law violations occur either when a foreign-born person enters the United States legally but overstays his or her visa, or when a foreign-born person enters surreptitiously and without a visa or legal authorization. When undocumented immigrants come to the attention of law enforcement, and if they do not voluntarily agree to deportation, their cases are heard by the U.S. court system, where caseloads in recent years have been huge. According to Metcalf (2011), in 2009, U.S. trial courts completed over 350,000 illegal alien cases. Many of the litigants were not recent arrivals; rather, they had been in the United States for an average of seven years. If the litigant sought asylum, they were most likely to have their petitions denied; between 2006 and 2009, 137,322 asylum applications were granted, while 167,599 were denied (Metcalf, 2011). Of concern to the U.S. courts is the need to ascertain if immigrants are foreign-born persons who are terrorists and entered the United States fraudulently. Metcalf found that between 1993 and 2004, every one of the 94 foreign-born persons involved in actual attacks on U.S. soil had committed an immigration law violation: 34 made false statements to enter the United States, 18 of the 94 entered on student visas, another four were approved to study in the United States, 17 had improper travel documents, and 13 overstayed their visas.

Immigration courts in the United States are unable to enforce removal decisions; the only agency that can arrest, detain, and remove illegal immigrants is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE was formed after passage of the Homeland Security Act in 2003, to provide enforcement of immigration laws, to investigate illegal trafficking of people and goods, and to prevent terrorism.⁴ The United States Supreme Court held, in Nielsen v. Preape (2019), that the government can pick up and hold immigrants without a bond hearing if they are subject to deportation. The Court held that the immigration law’s detention language mandates such detentions by Homeland Security even if the immigrant had otherwise been living in the nation for years. Preape was a permanent resident who was released from criminal custody for two drug crimes seven years prior to his deportation detention; he was then denied a bond release hearing. He claimed that he should have only been detained pending deportation immediately upon his release from incarceration, not seven years later, and should be allowed to be released on bond. The Court determined that Homeland Security has broad authority to detain immigrants subject to the 8 U.S.C.§1226 deportations. A release without detention, according to the Court, does not preclude subsequent deportation arrests under the mandatory arrest-detention language of the immigration statute. The Court issued its ruling only on its analysis of the statute and did not analyze any constitutional claims that detainees might otherwise have in regard to their deportation detentions.

Some research has been completed on the rights of immigrants who are to be deported. Guiffré (2017) argued that there should be human rights assurances when immigrants are facing deportation. While immigration courts are determining if an individual is to be removed, the immigrants are in a legal limbo. The “host state” can hold a person while the “receiving state” (the nation to which a deportee is to be sent) determines through diplomatic channels whether the legal transfer back to the receiving state can be accomplished. Of concern is whether the receiving state will provide fair treatment or might torture the deportee. Guiffré contends that diplomatic assurances that the deportee will be safe and treated fairly cannot be adequately monitored and are in essence political statements. She contends that these political assurances confuse immigrants and refugees with terrorists, whom host nations might consider to be foreigners who threaten the host nation’s national security.

The confusion between terrorists and immigrants, as a group, is reinforced when potential deportees are confined pending a removal decision. Medrano (2018) and Cervantes, Menjivar, & Staples (2017) found that while United States immigration law authorizes, even mandates, detention of immigrants, such detentions and holds exacerbate the difficulties experienced by non-dangerous immigrants and their families. United States’ immigration law enables deportation detentions when noncitizens commit a qualifying offense. Such offenses used to be defined as violent felonies, but immigration law changes have broadened qualifying removal offenses to include aggravated felonies, which include misdemeanor offenses with a sentence of more than one year (Medrano). In addition, immigration law allows the detention of persons who seek admission at the border and who are deemed to be inadmissible and subject to administrative deportation processes (Medrano, 2018). These detentions have garnered scrutiny because they treat these immigrants as if they are dangerous; such detentions, while not in a prison setting, have the characteristics of penal incarceration, and some centers had been formerly penal institutions (Cervantes et al., 2017; Medrano, 2018). Cervantes et al. (2017) found that female immigrant detainees become docile, experience anxiety, lose contact with family and children, experience violence and maltreatment in the center, and may be sexually assaulted by guards. Medrano (2018) found that while detentions are supposed to be brief, they can be prolonged. According to Medrano (2018, p. 611), “. . . in Colorado, the average is a staggering 1,037 days; in Illinois, the average is 1,007 days; in Texas, the average is 818 days; and in New Jersey, the average is 814 days” of detention for immigrants undergoing removal proceedings.

Other nations are also using administrative proceedings to detain immigrants who are to be deported or denied entry into a country. In the European Union, multiple nations, while attempting to cooperate on responses to security concerns between nations in regard to terrorism, illegal immigration, and cross-border crime, have difficulty resolving legal and administrative concerns pertaining to the Prüm Treaty (Sallavaci, 2018). Different national laws and administrative systems make it difficult for cross-jurisdictional matters to be resolved. Consequently, individual nations fall back on their own individualized laws and administrative processes when handling immigrant detentions and removals. In Russia, for example, deportations seem to follow the United States and United Kingdom’s administrative deportation processes (Kubal, 2017). Kubal (2017) found that Russia is using administrative processes to retroactively apply immigration laws to bar entry to some immigrants and to blur the distinctions between the criminal and civil law. Crocitti and Selmini (2017) found that, as Italian law gave greater weight to administrative decisions by local Mayors, the nation’s “migration patterns and the country’s confused, constantly changing, and fragmented immigration laws relegate many immigrants to conditions of illegality and marginality” (p. 100). Crocitti and Selmini (2017) found that the Mayors’ Administrative Orders in Italy made it difficult for immigrants to find and hold employment and to integrate into Italian society. By criminalizing administrative violations, the immigration systems in various nations undermine the integrity of the criminal law and the criminal justice process. Aliverti (2017), for example, analyzed the purpose of the criminal law and the principle that the law proscribes and punishes wrong doers for minor offenses. Immigration offenses, such as “no documentation” or “possession of a forged document,” punish immigrants for strict liability crimes, which then subject them to enhanced punishments associated with deportation, fines, and detention. Spena (2017) argued that the substantive criminal law does not justify the criminalization of irregular immigration. Irregular immigration is when persons come to another nation’s border and seek entry when legal entrance is closed to them. By analyzing the western traditions of the substantive law and considering if irregular immigration satisfies a mala in se or a mala prohibitum offense, Spena (2017) contended that the criminalization of immigration does not satisfy either type of crime category because it relies upon misleading or unsound principles of law. Nation states should not treat individuals seeking entry as part of a massive group that will threaten a nation cumulatively when actual individual harms are speculative. Spena (2017) concluded that human rights are negatively impacted if immigration is criminalized because it hinders the basic treatment of all persons who seek a better life with dignity.

Immigration, Interpersonal Violence, and Gender Victimization

The gender of the victim needs to be analyzed in regard to immigrants and crime. Xie et al. (2018) found immigration concentrated neighborhoods to be a protective factor against violent crime overall, and they found that the protective factor of immigrant concentration differed among those living in a city and those living in other communities. In their study of the NCVS data, between 2008 and 2012, Xie et al. found the protective factor against intimate violence was more pronounced in inner city, disadvantaged neighborhoods than for Latinos living in more affluent areas.

While research shows that recent immigrants are less likely to commit crime even in neighborhoods that are considered to be socially disadvantaged, Wright and Benson (2010) wondered whether the immigrant paradox also extended to intimate partner violence. Using 343 neighborhood tract data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago, U.S. Census data, and community surveys, the researchers found that social disorganization theory, by itself, cannot explain intimate partner violence crimes. In communities with high levels of immigrant populations, there were lower levels of intimate partner violence. They found that when families and neighbors do not view family violence as a private matter, then the neighborhoods experience lower rates of intimate partner violence. Wright and Benson (2010) averred that cultural norms about family violence can mitigate against domestic violence. Thus, family violence entails a crime that has individual, cultural, and neighborhood characteristics that should be taken into account. The gender of immigrants may play a factor as to whether victims of crime will report it to the police. Pitts (2014) found that Latina immigrants who experienced interpersonal violence (physical, verbal, and sexual) committed by a partner or intimate were more likely to find help in dealing with the abuse from a community agency, rather than from the police. The most significant situational factors that led women to report victimization to the police included access to transportation and the presence of an eyewitness who saw the abuse. Pitts also found that the most significant demographic characteristics of women who reported abuse to the police were education and age; older and more educated women called the police. In addition, whether the woman reported the abuse was not dependent on her ability to speak English or if she was legally married to the offender. Pitts (2014) concluded that the reasons that Latina women do not report a crime of domestic violence to the police are based in both situational and demographic factors that distinguish Latina immigrant victims from other female victims of interpersonal violence.

Reina, Lohman, and Maldonado (2014) also found that Latina victims of domestic violence do not seek help or report their victimization to the police. These researchers found that cultural understandings about domestic violence and feelings of shame were barriers to women seeking assistance; the lack of English language proficiency did not prevent women from finding help because materials were available to them in Spanish at advocacy centers. Overall, Reina et al. found that undocumented status was a major factor that affected the victims’ decision to seek help. The researchers found that the women’s abusers intimidate the women by using the threat of deportation as a method of control and power. The Latinas in the study were afraid of leaving their abusers and exhibited other characteristics associated with battered women (shame, guilt, feelings of love for the abuser, fear of further abuse if they attempt to leave). The lack of “culturally competent” services among service providers and within the police meant that undocumented Latina abuse victims did not know or understand how to seek help.

Using a 2008 Pew Hispanic Center survey of a disproportionately stratified national sample of Latino/Latina adults, Messing, Becerra, Ward-Lasher, and Androff (2015) sought to find out what Latinas thought about the police and if they were afraid of deportation. Messing et al. found that if the fear of deportation increased, then the female respondents were also more likely to be afraid that the police would use excessive force on arrestees. In addition, as fear of deportation among the Latina respondents increased, then the women also said that they would definitely not report crime victimization to the police. Latinas who became U.S. citizens also indicated that they were not very likely to report serious crime victimization to the police. However, Latinas who were older and more educated indicated a willingness to report violent crime victimization. Messing et al. concluded that fear of deportation and concern about unfair treatment by the criminal justice system impede Latinas from reporting violent crime victimization. If women believed that the police would not use excessive force, then their willingness to report violent crime increased. Latinas are concerned with unfair treatment by the criminal justice system because they worry about immigration detention and deportation, unlawful imprisonment of immigrants who have an immigration detainer placed on them, and other concerns for their safety. Such concerns, according to Messing et al. (2015), are expressed not only by undocumented immigrants but also by those who became U.S. citizens. The Latinas with legal status allowing them to be in the United States may be protecting other family members who are undocumented.

Gutierrez and Kirk (2017), using NCVS data between 1974 and 2004, found that crime reporting is negatively associated with the increasing size of the noncitizen and foreign-born populations within cities. They found that, as the noncitizen population increased 1%, the odds of violent crime reporting decreased about 6%. In addition, as the foreign born population increased, the probability for reporting violent crime decreased about 15%. Gutierrez and Kirk (2017, p. 947) argue that the police need to be aware that immigrant communities may not report crime and that these communities may experience negative consequences from “uncontrolled crime.”

Workplace Victimization

Undocumented immigrants who are working in the United States may experience victimization by employers who exploit them and by street offenders who assume, perhaps correctly, that the immigrant will not report the victimization to the police for fear that he or she will be deported. In the United States, the deportation of illegal immigrants has been increasing since the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IRIRA). The IRIRA, together with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), strengthened the ability of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants (Fussell, 2011). Gleeson (2010) reported that for every 19 civilian workers in the United States, one was undocumented, with more than 8 million undocumented immigrants working in particular labor-sector positions, such as construction, food service, and janitorial work. In her study of two cities (Houston, Texas, and San Jose, California), Gleeson found that illegal status intensifies workplace abuses. Gleeson noted that employers may prefer immigrant workers for specific trades if the workers are uneducated, do not have English language skills, and if there is volatility in the economic market. Immigrant workers experienced violations like “paycheck irregularities, wage and hour abuse, and lack of access to safety equipment” (Gleeson, 2010, p. 569). Despite the undocumented immigrants’ knowledge of workplace laws that would protect them, the majority of the respondents Gleeson interviewed did not want to pursue their claims. The respondents wanted to earn money, were afraid of retribution if they spoke out, were afraid of being found out as an undocumented worker, and were afraid of losing their jobs even if they were not undocumented. The workers merely wanted to keep a low profile despite their vulnerability. Undocumented Mexican immigrants ultimately thought about going back to Mexico when they retired; they did not focus on what legalization could mean for their employment stability, they only wanted immediate work to support themselves and their family.

Fussell’s (2011) study of undocumented Latino migrant workers found that their situational and demographic characteristics exposed them to crime victimization. Many of the workers in her study were recent migrants to the United States who sought work; in seeking to maximize the money that they earned as undocumented laborers and to minimize the amount of money that they spent on living so that they could remit money to their families in Latin and South America, the men worked hard, but their low pay and lack of ties to the community in which they lived set them up for both labor and crime victimization. The victimizations that the undocumented migrants self-reported included wage theft (41%), worksite abuse by employers (22%), robbery (10%), and assault (9%). Fussell found that male day laborers were more likely to experience wage theft and worksite abuse than other Latino workers, and that all groups of Latino migrants were vulnerable to crime victimization, such as robbery and assault.

Concern About Refugees

Since 1975, over three million refugees have come to the United States from all over the world (U.S. Department of State, 2015), and the United States admitted 84,995 refugees in 2016 (U.S. Department of State, 2017). Many refugees want to start a new life in the United States and other Western nations to escape from the ordeals that they experience in their homelands: torture, war, and persecutions due to their race, ethnicity, religion, and political orientation. Instability in North Africa and the Middle East further drove forced migrations of people into harm’s way as unscrupulous traffickers warehoused, harmed, and tortured migrants without concern that they would be stopped (Anderson, 2016). Anderson found that increased border security does not abate refugee migration or solve the problems associated with massive forced migrations of people; refugees are willing to take the risks associated with migration rather than stay in dangerous homelands (e.g., Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and Syria). According to Anderson, nations need to address the economic and political situations in the distressed nations to stop the poor from risking their lives by migration, rather than continuing to deal with the human crisis through enhanced, but failed, border security measures. If the conflict is not abated, then more refugees will seek asylum and will experience victimization during their migration.

To understand the degree to which anomie explains refugee crime rates in Switzerland, Simmler, Plassard, Schär, and Schuster (2017) interviewed a sample of 78 refugees from three asylum centers in 2014. The sample was comprised of a large number of young, single males who emigrated due to war or political persecution in their home nations. They found that the refugees had higher rates of property crime (e.g., shoplifting) compared to Swiss residents or other immigrant populations. While the refugees reported strong hopes for a brighter future than they had in their home nations, the refugees had low prospects for meaningful employment. Simmler et al. indicated that such a disconnect between the refugee’s hopes for an improved life and their actual chances can result in anomie. While only a few refugee’s indicated that they knew about crime opportunities open to them, many who did were not tempted to engage in illegal behaviors. Simmler et al. (2017) concluded that the Swiss society should aim to provide equal opportunities to refugees to lower any concerns that the immigrant’s anomie could lead to crime.