"Illegal Immigrants and Crime – Assessing the Evidence"

GrundleStiltzkin

Cato scholars have since published numerous Immigration Research and Policy Briefs to shed light on this topic. Michelangelo Landgrave, a doctoral student in political science at the University of California, Riverside, and I released a paper today that estimates that illegal immigrant incarceration rates are about half those of native-born Americans in 2017. In the same year, legal immigrant incarceration rates are then again half those of illegal immigrants. Those results are similar to what Landgrave and I published for the years 2014 and 2016. We estimated illegal immigrant incarceration rates by using the same residual method that demographers use to estimate the number of illegal immigrants in the United States, only we also applied that method to the prison population. We used the same method to also find that the incarceration rate for young illegal immigrants brought here as children and theoretically eligible for deferred action is slightly below those of native-born Americans.

The second strand of research from Cato looks at criminal conviction rates by immigration status in the state of Texas. Unlike every other state, Texas keeps track of the immigration statuses of convicted criminals and the crimes that they committed. Texas is a wonderful state to study because it borders Mexico, has a large illegal immigrant population, is a politically conservative state governed by Republicans, had no jurisdictions that limited its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement in 2015, and it has a law and order reputation for strictly enforcing criminal laws. If anything, Texas is more serious about enforcing laws against illegal immigrant criminals than other states. But even here, illegal immigrant conviction rates are about half those of native-born Americans – without any controls for age, education, ethnicity, or any other characteristic. The illegal immigrant conviction rates for homicide, larceny, and sex crimes are also below those of native-born Americans. The criminal conviction rates for legal immigrants are the lowest of all.

https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-immigrants-crime-assessing-evidence

RaceBannon

None of what I wrote above will console a victim of illegal immigrant crime – and it shouldn’t. To those victims and their loved ones, their pain is not diminished by knowing how unlikely it was to happen to them. There will be criminals in any large group of people and there are some infuriating and shocking anecdotes. The public seems to understand that the actions of a comparatively small number of illegal immigrants do not mean that they are more crime-prone than native-born Americans – which is what matters the most when debating public policy. A 2016 Pew poll found that only 27 percent of Americans thought that illegal immigrants were more likely to commit serious crimes than native-born Americans, while 67 percent said less likely. Among Republicans, 42 percent said that illegal immigrants are more likely to commit serious crimes and 52 percent said less likely. A Quinnipiac poll in 2018 revealed that only 17 percent of voters thought that illegal immigrants committed more crimes than native-born Americans and 72 percent of voters thought that illegal immigrants committed less crime.


One is too many

RaceBannon

My issue is the destruction of the labor rates for blue collar work, in particular construction. I also have a problem with state's rights and sanctuary cities

I'll sign off on CATO. The crime isn't THAT bad. Whatever

Home grown criminals remain an issue

BleachedAnusDawg

It doesn't matter what the rates are. None of those crimes should be committed, regardless of how low the rate is, because those people shouldn't be here. They are still contributing an additional burden on the legal system and lives of citizens, a burden which should not exist.

Sledog

The problem is there are at least double the number of illegals in country than the figure tossed out in the media. Illegal crime is a huge problem. They are the drug trade as well.

GrundleStiltzkin

BleachedAnusDawg said:

It doesn't matter what the rates are. None of those crimes should be committed, regardless of how low the rate is, because those people shouldn't be here. They are still contributing an additional burden on the legal system and lives of citizens, a burden which should not exist.

I didn't take the article as a policy position, but simply trying to quantify the issue. The Texas findings are convincing to me.

Out of the scope of the article is, as you say, the original crime of illegal entry.

GrundleStiltzkin

Sledog said:

The problem is there are at least double the number of illegals in country than the figure tossed out in the media. Illegal crime is a huge problem. They are the drug trade as well.

Source?

Sledog

GrundleStiltzkin said:

Sledog said:

The problem is there are at least double the number of illegals in country than the figure tossed out in the media. Illegal crime is a huge problem. They are the drug trade as well.

Source?

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates

GrundleStiltzkin

Sledog said:

GrundleStiltzkin said:

Sledog said:

The problem is there are at least double the number of illegals in country than the figure tossed out in the media. Illegal crime is a huge problem. They are the drug trade as well.

Source?

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates

Good stuff.

The results, published in PLOS ONE, surprised the authors themselves. They started with the extremely conservative model and expected the results to be well below 11.3 million.
“Our original idea was just to do a sanity check on the existing number,” says Edward Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Operations Research at the Yale School of Management. “Instead of a number which was smaller, we got a number that was 50% higher. That caused us to scratch our heads.”
Jonathan Feinstein, the John G. Searle Professor of Economics and Management at Yale SOM, adds, “There’s a number that everybody quotes, but when you actually dig down and say, ‘What is it based on?’ You find it’s based on one very specific survey and possibly an approach that has some difficulties. So we went in and just took a very different approach.”
The 11.3 million number is extrapolated from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. “It’s been the only method used for the last three decades,” says Mohammad Fazel‐Zarandi, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and formerly a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in operations at the Yale School of Management. That made the researchers curious—could they reproduce the number using a different methodology?
The approach in the new research was based on operational data, such as deportations and visa overstays, and demographic data, including death rates and immigration rates. “We combined these data using a demographic model that follows a very simple logic,” Kaplan says. “The population today is equal to the initial population plus everyone who came in minus everyone who went out. It’s that simple.”
While the logic is simple—tally the inflows and outflows over time—actually gathering, assessing, and inserting the data appropriately into a mathematical model isn’t at all simple. Because there is significant uncertainty, the results are presented as a range. After running 1,000,000 simulations of the model, the researchers’ 95% probability range is 16 million to 29 million, with 22.1 million as the mean.

2001400ex

GrundleStiltzkin said:

Sledog said:

GrundleStiltzkin said:

Sledog said:

The problem is there are at least double the number of illegals in country than the figure tossed out in the media. Illegal crime is a huge problem. They are the drug trade as well.

Source?

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates

Good stuff.

The results, published in PLOS ONE, surprised the authors themselves. They started with the extremely conservative model and expected the results to be well below 11.3 million.
“Our original idea was just to do a sanity check on the existing number,” says Edward Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Operations Research at the Yale School of Management. “Instead of a number which was smaller, we got a number that was 50% higher. That caused us to scratch our heads.”
Jonathan Feinstein, the John G. Searle Professor of Economics and Management at Yale SOM, adds, “There’s a number that everybody quotes, but when you actually dig down and say, ‘What is it based on?’ You find it’s based on one very specific survey and possibly an approach that has some difficulties. So we went in and just took a very different approach.”
The 11.3 million number is extrapolated from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. “It’s been the only method used for the last three decades,” says Mohammad Fazel‐Zarandi, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and formerly a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in operations at the Yale School of Management. That made the researchers curious—could they reproduce the number using a different methodology?
The approach in the new research was based on operational data, such as deportations and visa overstays, and demographic data, including death rates and immigration rates. “We combined these data using a demographic model that follows a very simple logic,” Kaplan says. “The population today is equal to the initial population plus everyone who came in minus everyone who went out. It’s that simple.”
While the logic is simple—tally the inflows and outflows over time—actually gathering, assessing, and inserting the data appropriately into a mathematical model isn’t at all simple. Because there is significant uncertainty, the results are presented as a range. After running 1,000,000 simulations of the model, the researchers’ 95% probability range is 16 million to 29 million, with 22.1 million as the mean.

Grundle, I'm curious on your take. They are using a mathematic formula to extrapolate the number of illegals, based on historical data. This seems to project the number based on rates known prior to 08. But every study I've seen, when the recession happened in 08, from then on, there has been roughly net zero illegal immigration. The number of immigrants leaving is offsetting the number coming in, or close to it. Which of course should change the formula.

RaceBannon

GrundleStiltzkin said:

BleachedAnusDawg said:

It doesn't matter what the rates are. None of those crimes should be committed, regardless of how low the rate is, because those people shouldn't be here. They are still contributing an additional burden on the legal system and lives of citizens, a burden which should not exist.

I didn't take the article as a policy position, but simply trying to quantify the issue. The Texas findings are convincing to me.

Out of the scope of the article is, as you say, the original crime of illegal entry.

#metoo

I would dismiss anything out of California but Texas does track this so the fact that the percentage is the same is convincing.

However percentages sound better than the raw numbers that Texas tracks.

http://dps.texas.gov/administration/crime_records/pages/txcriminalalienstatistics.htm

The Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement agencies in Texas participate in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). Participation in PEP enables DHS to work with state and local law enforcement to take custody of individuals who pose a danger to public safety before those individuals are released into our communities. In Texas, PEP begins at the local level when an individual is arrested and booked by a Texas law enforcement officer for a criminal violation of Texas law. The arrested individual's fingerprints are submitted to the Texas DPS and subsequently to the FBI for criminal history and warrant checks. This same biometric data is also sent to DHS' IDENT database so that ICE can determine the person's immigration status and whether the individual is a priority for removal, consistent with the DHS enforcement priorities. The immigration status information is returned to DPS by DHS. The following report is based upon the status indicators provided to the DPS. For the purposes of this report, the term "criminal alien" refers to an individual who has been identified as an alien by DHS and who has been arrested for a state criminal offense, typically a Misdemeanor B or higher, committed in Texas.

Lawful Presence Determined Through PEP
According to DHS status indicators, over 282,000 criminal aliens have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011 and February 28, 2019, of which over 191,000 were classified as illegal aliens by DHS.

Between June 1, 2011 and February 28, 2019, these 191,000 illegal aliens were charged with more than 299,000 criminal offenses which included arrests for 545 homicide charges; 33,082 assault charges; 5,779 burglary charges; 37,689 drug charges; 411 kidnapping charges; 16,119 theft charges; 23,914 obstructing police charges; 1,679 robbery charges; 3,516 sexual assault charges; 4,722 sexual offense charges; and 3,007 weapon charges. DPS criminal history records reflect those criminal charges have thus far resulted in over 122,000 convictions including 245 homicide convictions; 13,801 assault convictions; 3,176 burglary convictions; 18,105 drug convictions; 175 kidnapping convictions; 7,160 theft convictions; 11,421 obstructing police convictions; 1,021 robbery convictions; 1,731 sexual assault convictions; 2,376 sexual offense convictions; and 1,297 weapon convictions.