Exploring the Contextual Determinants of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants and Criminal Activity and their Spillover Policy Implications

Immigrants are routinely tied to a range of social problems in the policy making process in the US political system. Little is known however about the extent to which citizens hold attitudes that connect immigrants to particular social problems and whether these attitudes spill over to influence citizens’ preferences toward specific public policy alternatives that might appear to be largely independent of immigrants and immigration. Investigating the nexus between immigration and crime, we ask how Anglo whites’ contextual environments influence their propensity to link immigrants to a salient social pathology like crime. Results show that whites living in states where immigrant populations have increased most dramatically and in states with lower socioeconomic characteristics are more likely to associate immigration with increased criminal activity. Whites’ attitudes toward immigration‐induced crime has important spillover implications to the larger public policy making process as whites who view immigrants as a cause of criminal activity are more likely to support tougher criminal sentencing and the death penalty.     

DOES IMMIGRATION INCREASE HOMICIDE?

Understanding the complex relationship between immigration and crime was once a core concern of American sociology. Yet the extensive post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States has done little to rekindle scholarly interest in this topic, even as politicians and other public figures advocate public policies to restrict immigration as a means of preventing crime. Although both popular accounts and sociological theory predict that immigration should increase crime in areas where immigrants settle, this study of Miami, El Paso, and San Diego neighborhoods shows that, controlling for other influences, immigration generally does not increase levels of homicide among Latinos and African Americans. Our results not only challenge stereotypes of the "criminal immigrant' but also the core criminological notion that immigration, as a social process, disorganizes communities and increases crime.     

Race/Ethnicity and Stop‐and‐Frisk: Past,Present, Future

Scholarly debates surrounding stop‐and‐frisk typically assess the effectiveness and lawfulness of stop‐and‐frisk. Notwithstanding these efforts, recent reviews have excluded some recent research that addresses its impact on racial and ethnic immigrants. Understanding how the practice of stop‐and‐frisk affects racial and ethnic immigrants is worth including in reviews of these policies, considering the recent growth of research involving crime and immigrants that largely finds that immigration does not result in higher levels of crime. This review includes recent work showing that overall enforcement – stops and arrests – is higher in immigrant communities despite their lower levels of criminal involvement and recent work exploring differences among first‐generation and second‐generation immigrants in perceptions of police stops. Finally, some suggestions for the future of stop‐and‐frisk research are considered.     

Who “They” Are Matters: Immigrant Stereotypes and Assessments of the Impact of Immigration

We investigate the relationship between stereotypes of immigrants and assessments of the impact of immigration on U.S. society. Our analysis exploits a split‐ballot survey of registered voters in Ohio, who were asked to evaluate both the characteristics of one of four randomly assigned immigrant groups and perceived impacts of immigration. We find that associations between impact assessments and stereotypes of Middle Eastern, Asian, and European immigrants are weak and fully attenuated by control covariates. By contrast, this relationship for Latin American immigrants is strong and robust to controls, particularly in the areas of unemployment, schools, and crime. Our findings suggest that public views of the impacts of immigration are strongly connected to beliefs about the traits of Latin American immigrants in particular.     

Subordinating Myth: Latino/a Immigration,Crime, and Exclusion

Rhetoric about “crime‐prone immigrants” has contributed to increased enforcement of the U.S.‐Mexico border, the passage of punitive immigration laws, and state and local efforts to make life difficult for new arrivals. Yet scholarly research refutes the notion that immigrants commit more crime. How do we explain this glaring contradiction? By reviewing recent research on immigration, crime, and social control in the context of racial stratification, this article describes the criminalization of Latino/a immigrants in the U.S. as a subordinating myth; that is, a falsity used as part of a larger effort to misallocate material, political, and cultural resources. Four ways in which the criminalization of immigrants contributes to racial exclusion are discussed: the profiting from immigration detention; the political scapegoating of racialized immigrants; the degrading of racialized bodies in enforcement efforts; and the literal control of exploitable populations. The article concludes with a call to develop further our understanding of the relationship between immigration and crime from this critical perspective in order to subordinate the myth of immigrant criminality.     

Rehabilitating the Criminality of Immigrants Under Section 19 of the Canadian Immigration Act1

Immigration has historically been associated with moral entrepreneurship and xenophobia. In periods of high unemployment and global dislocation, immigrants easily become the targets of political commentators who complain of their criminality, morals, demand on public services, and competition for scarce employment. In this exercise, looking at the recidivism of immigrants who come to Canada with a previous, foreign criminal history, quite a different picture emerges. Among this random sample (N=204), 97.5 percent of immigrants granted a rehabilitation waiver under the provisions of the Canadian Immigration Act were not re‐arrested in Canada within a period of about 3.5 years after their landing was approved by the Minister. Of those who were arrested, most of the delinquency was manageable and, in fact, resulted in either an acquittal, diversion or lower‐range sanctions. This is not the kind of imagery complained of by the tabloids or critics in the body politic. It behooves us, then, to exercise care in discussing crime and immigration, as it is a subject easily prone to the creation of “moral panics” and resulting repressive legislation against persons of color.     

Making the Lead: Article and Contextual Correlates of Front-Page Coverage within the Immigration-Crime Debate

Abstract

While an abundance of literature demonstrates that immigration is associated with lower rates of crime, public opinion expects the opposite. There remain many reasons for such incongruity, including crystalized political ideologies and structural barriers to assimilation. The current study examines another important dimension: media narratives among the most prominent immigration and crime news articles. Specifically, we explore how news outlets narratively describe or “frame” the link between immigration and crime and, in turn, how such frames influence the prominence of news stories. Using content analysis of over 3,800 articles from 2008 to 2012 geo-located and paired with a host of macro-level data, multi-level models reveal that (1) one-third of local stories describe immigration as crime-increasing; (2) articles that link immigration to rising rates of crime are more likely to appear on the front page of newspapers, as are stories describing immigration’s impact on the justice system or the rights of immigrants within it; and (3) articles published in places with lower rates of crime, higher median household incomes, and smaller foreign-born populations are more likely to feature on the front page. We conclude with implications for ongoing public policy debates and research on immigration and crime.     

Different Game,Different Frame?: Black Counterdiscourses and Depictions of Immigration in Atlanta's African‐American and Mainstream Press

This article compares the discourse on immigration found in Atlanta's African‐American press (Atlanta Daily World) to that found in Atlanta's mainstream press (Atlanta Journal‐Constitution). The Daily World's black counterdiscourse situates immigration within a racial frame, discussing Latinos and immigrants interchangeably and casting African Americans as deserving yet excluded citizens. Immigrants appear in the Daily World as either allies in the struggle for civil rights or as competitors for jobs. Although the Daily World crime frames focus on concerns about racial profiling, the Journal‐Constitution often depicts immigrants as criminals or discusses immigration in terms of legal status and policy.     

Unauthorized Migrants and the (Il)Logic of “Crime Control”: A Human Rights Perspective on US Federal and Local State Immigration Policies

Immigration control, widely regarded the sovereign right of nation states, has often been pursued at the expense of civil and human rights. More than a century ago, nativists legitimated a punitive approach to immigration control that treated migrants’ rights as secondary by branding millions of newcomers to the United States as a “dangerous class”. In many ways, recent policies similarly criminalize immigrants and deploy crime control strategies in response. This article reviews the most significant of these policies at the federal and local state level, including: border security measures, detention and deportation, the 287(g) program, anti‐immigrant city ordinances, and the Arizona law (SB1070). Each initiative has been framed as necessary to protect American citizens from serious crime. We focus on four ways in which these policies violate human rights: first, border security measures that result in migrant deaths violate the right to life; second, detention and deportation violate the right to liberty; third, detention and deportation punish unlawful residents as though they were guilty of criminal rather than civil violations of the law, imposing penalties that are arbitrary and disproportionately harsh; and fourth, local state policies to counter illegal immigration encourage racial profiling, a practice that violates the right to freedom from discrimination.     

Fiction Over Facts: How Competing Narrative Forms Explain Policy in a New Immigration Destination1

U.S. immigration has changed dramatically in the last 20 years: immigrants have increasingly gravitated toward “new destinations” and a growing portion are undocumented. In the absence of federal comprehensive immigration reform, states are proposing a patchwork of laws. While some laws encourage immigrant integration, most seek restriction. To understand this trend, this article analyzes Utah as a new immigration destination, exploring its transformation from an inclusive to a restrictive state. It focuses on a major debate: whether to allow unauthorized residents legal driving privileges. Because Utah initiated this law earlier than most, it leads this debate. To explain its evolution, this article analyzes 10 years of legislative debates and articles published on this law. Building on the narrative studies literature, I find that both sides of the immigration debate utilized a public safety and well‐being narrative. However, supporters of the driver license law relied on a “lower mimetic” narrative, characterized by logic and factual arguments. In contrast, their opponents wove a compelling, “apocalyptic” narrative to criticize the law. This narrative indelibly linked immigration to the dangers of crime and terrorism and thus paved the way for the passage of one of the most restrictive immigration laws in the United States.     

Earning Gaps for Chinese Immigrants in Canada and the United States

This study compares the US and Canada on the gap in earnings between Chinese immigrants and native‐born whites. Canada and the US are arguably more alike than most possible country pairings, yet they differ in significant ways in their approaches to immigration and integration. The primary difference between Canada and the US regarding immigration policy is that Canada selects a larger proportion of economic immigrants – that is, those admitted based on their ability to contribute to the economy – than the US's focus on family reunification. Canadian immigration and multicultural integration policy does not appear to improve Chinese immigrant earnings in the way that might be predicted from Canada's skilled‐based immigrant selection policy and welcoming social context. In spite of a more laissez‐faire approach to immigrant integration and a less skill‐selective immigration policy, we show that Chinese immigrants are earning relatively more in the US than in Canada.     

Latino Immigration,Interaction, and Homicide Victimization

As Latinos spread across the United States, many Americans have begun to fear that their arrival will spark an increase in crime. Unfortunately, early explanations of the immigration-crime link, which found that immigrants disorganized communities, focused on the experience of Eastern European immigrants. This article updates previous literature by focusing on the experience of Latino immigrants. I find that (1) Latino immigration is linked to crime only in new Latino destinations, (2) this link is mitigated by increased interaction among Latinos, and (3) Latino interaction lowers victimization regardless of destination.     

Organizing Identities: Immigrant New Yorkers Negotiating Latinidad1

Across the United States, immigrants’ rights protests, marches, and demonstrations captured the attention of the public and of lawmakers in the spring of 2006. Much of the rhetoric that emerged from these mobilizations included an assertion of Latino/a immigrant identity. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in New York City in 2006 and 2007, this article argues that, confronted with a strong and clear organizational discourse of pan‐ethnic Latino/a unity, Latin American immigrants articulated a variety of identities. I found no clear link between self‐identification as Latino/a and participation in political mobilizations for immigration reform; this is in contrast to previous studies of Latino/a political activity. Examining the interactions, perspectives, and practices of Latin American immigrants involved with one community‐based organization, this study attempts to address the lack of micro‐level studies of immigrants’ everyday lives.     

The expansion of “crimmigration,” mass detention,and deportation

In recent years, the deportation and detention of immigrants has become a common phenomenon around the world. In this article, we shed light on the global expansion of crimmigration (the increasingly blurring of lines between immigration and criminal laws) and examine in depth the United States as an example of this trend. Crimmigration scholarship has largely focused on the processes in which laws, media narratives, and political discourses criminalize undocumented immigrants. We summarize the literature that demonstrates how these processes are predicated on the racialization and gendering of certain immigrants, in the United States and elsewhere. Using the US case as an example, we discuss how criminalization practices are closely tied to for profit prison interests. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research to critically examine the criminalization of immigration and immigrants.     

A Shot of Morality? Hispanic Immigration,Religious Contextual Characteristics,and Violence

Extant research often finds that the relative size of the Hispanic immigrant population is inversely associated with rates of crime at the macro level. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the indirect pathways through which Hispanic immigration might impact crime, especially sociocultural characteristics such as religious context. Utilizing data on known violent crimes from over 600 U.S. counties in 2010 paired with religious contextual data from the Religious Congregation and Membership Survey (RCMS), we observe that the presence of Hispanic immigrants is positively associated with community-level Catholic adherence, civically engaged religious adherence, and religious homogeneity that, in turn, are negatively associated with violent crime. Overall, religious contextual characteristics appear to significantly mediate the link between Hispanic immigration and violence at the macro level. Implications for the immigration-crime literature and broader macro-structural research are discussed.     

Hispanic Immigration and Black Violence at the Macro‐Level: Examining the Conditioning Effect of Victim Race/Ethnicity

Much attention has been devoted to the relationship between Hispanic immigration and violent offending at the macro‐level, including how it varies across racial and ethnic groups. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the conditioning effect of the race/ethnicity of the victim, or how Hispanic immigration is associated with crime by one racial/ethnic group against members of the same or different groups. Using National Incident‐Based Reporting System offending estimates and American Community Survey data, we examine the association between Hispanic immigration and black intra‐ and intergroup (black‐on‐white and black‐on‐Hispanic) homicide, robbery, and serious index violence in over 350 U.S. communities. We employ advanced imputation methods to address missing data that have constrained much prior research, as well as utilize crime measures adjusted for the likelihood of random contact between groups. Findings suggest that (1) Hispanic immigration has a positive association with black violence on the whole, but that (2) this association is conditioned by the race/ethnicity of the victim. Our results reinforce the importance of distinguishing across offender–victim dyads in research on the immigration–crime nexus, particularly in light of competing theoretical expectations. Directions for future research and policy are discussed.     

Framing and immigration through the trump era

For the last decade, undocumented or illegal immigration has been one of the most contested policy issues in the United States, with significant news attention on policies affecting the undocumented population, ranging from deportations to comprehensive immigration reform, the DREAM Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite these prominent and multifaceted policy debates, scholarship on media framing and public opinion remain more focused on the portrayal of immigrants rather than policies affecting them. In general, scholars find that policy frames are far more consequential to public opinion than equivalency frames (variations in how news media describe unauthorized immigrants, either as “illegal” or “undocumented”) or episodic frames (whether news articles are heavy on human‐interest stories rather than policy facts and statistics). Also, negative frames generally have stronger effects than positive frames, and these effects sometimes vary by partisanship and family migration history. Finally, the relative infrequency of powerful frames in news stories, like a life spent in the United States, provides opportunities for advocates to move public opinion on immigration policy. These findings have important implications for future battles over immigration policy in the United States, which show no signs of abating.     

Constructing Immigrants: Portrayals of Migrant Groups in British National Newspapers, 2010–2012

Public opposition to immigration in Britain reflects perceptions of immigrants that focus disproportionately on “illegal” immigration and asylum seekers, rather than more numerous workers, students, and family members. This study examines coverage of immigration in the British national press, to see whether press portrayals of migrants provide a basis for these images of immigration underlying public attitudes. We use corpus linguistic methods to analyze 43 million words of news from 2010 to 2012. Among other findings, we show that press portrayals match public perceptions of migrants, with “illegal immigrants” and “failed asylum seekers” as predominant depictions in broadsheet and tabloid newspapers.     

Social identity and violence among immigrant adolescents

Whereas traditional criminological theories treat juvenile delinquency largely as a reactive and expressive behavior that only seldom leads to specialized criminal offending or a criminal career, this article proposes an alternative classification of offenses that accounts for the difference between youthful reactive conduct and specialized criminality. It examines the effect of immigration on delinquency among juvenile Russians in Israel. In contrast to previous work that has examined the criminogenic effect of immigration without differentiating specific types of delinquency, this study investigates the immigration effect on eclectic as well as specialized delinquency. Based on survey data from face-to-face interviews with 910 immigrant youths from the former Soviet Union in Israel, the study finds important results regarding the integration of juvenile immigrants in modern societies. In contrast to the assumption that assimilation in multicultural societies represents a safe way for social adaptation and to prevent specific kinds of violent behavior, the authors find empirical support for a more sophisticated approach. Furthermore, the results underline the importance in differentiating between distinct forms of violence.