Researcher finds no link between crime, immigration

Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson examined crime and immigration in Chicago and around the United States to investigate the “popular stereotype” that areas undergoing immigration are associated with spiraling crime. Sampson discovered the opposite.

Sampson found concentrated immigration predicts lower rates of violence across communities in Chicago, with the relationship strongest in poor neighborhoods. Not only does immigration appear to be “protective” against violence in poverty areas, violence was significantly lower among Mexican-Americans compared to blacks and whites.

First-generation immigrants were 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans, he said.

“Reasons commonly cited for the apparent paradox of first-generation immigrants, especially Mexicans, are motivation to work, ambition and a desire not to be deported, characteristics that predispose them to low crime,” he said.

Sampson analyzed patterns from seven years’ worth of violent acts in Chicago committed by whites, blacks and Hispanics from 180 neighborhoods of varying levels of integration. He also analyzed recent data from police records and the U.S. Census for all communities in Chicago.

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For more: Robert Sampson, Harvard University, (617) 496-9716; http://contexts.org/articles/files/2008/01/contexts_winter08_sampson.pdf.

May 2008