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For more than five decades now, fear of migration from Bangladesh (and earlier Pakistans East Bengal province) has influenced the politics of Assam. To justify this, very high estimates of numbers of Bangladeshi migrants have been put out in the public domain in India.

In 1997, Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta stated in Parliament that there were 10 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants residing in India. In 2016, the Modi government declared in Parliament that there were as many as 20 million Bangladeshis living in India illegally (which would mean nearly 2% of Indias population was actually Bangladeshi).

Indias Supreme Court, which has been a strong driver of nativist sentiment on this issue, went on to assume that the number of illegal migrants runs into millions and is in fact an aggression on the State of Assam.

One part of this nativist sentiment is ethnic with Assamese nationalists opposing the migration of both Hindus and Muslims from Bangladesh. The other part of this is communal with Hindu nationalist parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party painting this as an influx of Muslims.

Adding to this is the pan-Indian stereotype of Bangladesh being much poorer than India, which drives Bangladeshis to across the border to find work.

This politics led to the Supreme Court in 2014 to mandate that the National Register of Citizens a list of bonafide Indian citizens be updated for the state of Assam. The process for verifying citizenship invented by the court was strict. Based on documents often generations-old, it had never used in any other part of the world.

While the push to update the NRC was powered by high estimates of illegal migrant numbers, the final result published in 2019 ironically ended up disproving them. The number of people who were found not to be verifiable Indian citizens was around 1.9 million more than ten times lower than the figure put out by the Modi government in 2016.

This gap between the estimates and final NRC figures caused shock in Assam. We are disappointed as the figure of 1.9 million exclusion is nowhere close to earlier figures of illegal immigrants, the All Assam Students Associations Samujjal Bhattacharya admitted.

In addition, the NRCs final list seemed to belie another enduring myth: that of mass Muslim migration from Bangladesh. While there is no official religious breakup in the list (and will probably never will be), senior BJP leaders from Assam have admitted that in reality Bengali-speaking Hindus and not Muslims had been the community most prominent in the NRCs final list of exclusions.

As a consequence, from being a strong supporter of the NRC, the BJP morphed overnight into a trenchant critic, even going so far as to petition the Supreme Court to re-verify the final list. The other side of the coin is that Assams Muslims of Bengali-origin largely support the current NRC and oppose plans to redo the process.

What explains this massive gap between projections and actuals when it comes to the magnitude and nature of migration?

Part of the answer might lie in a new economic projection put out by the International Monetary Fund on October 13 that shows Indias per capita gross domestic product will slip below Bangladeshs for 2020. In other words, Bangladeshis will soon be, on an average, (marginally) richer than Indians.

If this is the Bangladesh-India comparison, its not too difficult to work out what it would be with Assam, one of the Indian Unions poorest states. Currently Bangladeshs per capita GDP is around 1.5 times that of Assam. Moreover, it has been significantly higher since 1971 the year Bangladesh became independent as well as the cut-off year for the NRC.

Living standards diverge even further if measured using human development indicators. The average life expectancy of a Bangladeshi is nearly a decade more than that of a resident of Assam. At 41, Assams infant mortality rate the number of infants who die before the age of one per 1,000 births is 1.5 times that of Bangladeshs (26). In Bangladesh, the maternal mortality rate the number of mothers who die for every 1 lakh childbirths is 173 but jumps to 215 in Assam.

It is thus hardly surprising that the politically-driven estimates of massive economic migration were not borne out by the actual NRC figures.

Instead, what is often elided in this discussion is that one of the main drivers of migration from Bangladesh has been religious persecution. It is well established that the 1971 Liberation War was the peak period of migration from Bangladesh. Much of this was driven by the fact that the Pakistan Army specifically targeted Bangladeshi Hindus. As many as 90% of refugees who fled Bangladesh during the war were Hindu.

And 1971 wasnt the only instance of religious persecution within Bangladesh driving outmigration. Many of the other triggers for migration from Bangladesh post 1971 were also communally charged, such as the assassination of Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975 (after which Bangladesh declared itself an Islamic state), riots in the early 1990s related to the Babri Masjid in India and communal violence after the right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party took power in 2001.

This history means that the proportion of Hindus in Bangladesh has decreased by more than half from 20% in 1970 to a little above 8% today. Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of the Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council, a Bangladeshi human rights group, says that this precipitous fall is explained by the mass migration of Bangladeshi Hindus to India.

Bangladeshs political trajectory and the quantum of Hindu outmigration since 1971 thus might explain the NRCs religious breakup. It would also help make sense of why the three Muslim-majority border district of Assam have actually seen an NRC-exclusion rate less than the state average even as that of the Hindu-majority border district of Cachar is higher.

This modern Bangladeshi history is often unknown or skipped when Indians talk of illegal immigration so much so that Scroll.in had to publish a factual rebuttal to the widespread myth that the Assam NRC is anti-Muslim after the final list was published in 2019.

Nativist politics that targets immigrants is a regular feature of rich, developed Western countries such as the United States or Great Britain. However, this is much rarer in a poor country of Indias income level. Assams politics, where there are fears of mass economic migration from a richer country, might thus be unique.

The final NRC data has thrown the BJP into a tizzy with the party now scrambling to change the final list. To add to that, with Bangladesh now approximately as rich as India and growing much faster Indian politicians might find the narrative of a massive influx of economic refugees more difficult to push.

See the article here:
Has Bangladeshs economic rise taken the wind out of the NRC narrative? - Scroll.in

Using data from data.census.gov, a new CIS Backgrounder examines growth in the nation's immigrant population. That data, from the American Community Survey (ACS), shows that in the first two years of the Trump administration (2017 to 2019), growth in the immigrant population (legal and illegal) averaged only about 200,000 a year, in contrast to 650,000 a year from 2010 to 2017. (See Figure 1.) That Backgrounder also estimated that net migration the difference between the number of immigrants coming vs. leaving averaged 953,000 from 2010 to 2017, but 525,000 from 2017 to 2019. The Census Bureau has now released the public-use file of the ACS, allowing researchers to do more detailed analysis, including estimating in- and out-migration separately. Our analysis of the public-use data indicates that the falloff in net migration was caused by a substantial increase in out-migration in the first part of the Trump administration, as well as a more modest reduction in new arrivals. (All figures are through July 2019 and pre-date the impact of Covid-19.)

Source: American Community Survey 2010 to 2019 from data.census.gov.

The green bars in Figure 2 report the number of immigrants arriving each year based on the 2001 to 2019 ACS. As the ACS reflects the population on July 1 of each year, it is only possible to know how many people arrived during an entire calendar year once the following year's data is released. So, for example, the number of immigrants who arrived in all of 2018 is based on the 2019 ACS and the number arriving for all of 2017 is based on the 2018 ACS and so on. (The arrival numbers are all based on the year of arrival question in the survey.) The half-year arrival numbers shown in the blue bars are based on the survey for the year in which it is shown.

Source: 2001 to 2019 public-use files of the American Community Survey (ACS).

Figure 2 shows that the number of immigrants arriving fell during the Great Recession and then rebounded, peaking at 1.7 million in 2016, the last year of the Obama administration. But in 2017, 1.4 million immigrants arrived and 1.3 million arrived in 2018. Figures for the first half of 2019 indicate that the number of arrivals in 2019 is likely to be similar to 2017 and 2018. Clearly, the slowdown in growth partly reflects a decline in newcomers. It should be pointed out that Figure 2 shows that the unemployment rate of immigrants continued to improve between 2017 and 2018, and yet the number coming fell. As we discussed in our Backgrounder on this data, the decline in immigration almost certainly reflects policy changes, not the economy.

While the arrival data shows a clear decline, the really big change seems to have been in out-migration. Simply put, out-migration is the number of immigrants leaving each year. It is possible to roughly calculate this number by taking new arrivals and subtracting growth and deaths. Performing this calculation indicates that between 2010 and 2017 about 467,000 immigrants left each year on average. But between 2017 and 2019, 975,000 left each year on average.1

While these numbers reflect our best preliminary estimates based on the data, there are some important caveats about them. First, there are margins of error around each of the numbers used for these calculations, whereas our calculations take the point estimates as givens. (See Table 2 for confidence intervals.) Sampling variability can result in significant year-to-year fluctuations. However, calculating outmigration over multiple years should provide more statistically robust estimates. Second, out-migration is calculated for the entire period 2010 to 2017, and there may have been substantial variation during those years. Third, our method for estimating half-year migration for the second half of 2010 and the second half of 2017 are somewhat crude. Even with these caveats, it appears that annual out-migration in the first part of the Trump administration (2017 to 2019) was substantially higher than the average annual rate 2010 to 2017.

While the out-migration figures seem quite high, mathematically out-migration must have increased dramatically. It is the only way to account for the numbers in Figures 1 and 2. The number of deaths does not change much year to year, so the very modest growth (Figure 1) in the face of many new immigrants arriving (Figure 2) can only be explained by high out-migration. The only other possible explanation is some kind of problem with the data. This might take the form of a coding error or perhaps immigrants, or some subpopulation of them, have become less willing to identify themselves in the ACS. But at this point there is no indication this is the case.

Figure 3 reports the number of new immigrants settling in the United States by sending region.2 Table 1 (download as an Excel file, here) reports regions with more detail, and some countries. Figure 3 and Table 1 indicate that immigration declined after 2016 from just about every region and country. The only exception seems to be Central America and to some extent South America.

Source: 2001 to 2019 public-use files of the American Community Survey (ACS).

The biggest takeaway from these numbers, and our larger Backgrounder, is that immigration has slowed even as the economy expanded. We discuss at length in our Backgrounder, some of the policy changes under the Trump administration that seem to have had an impact on immigration levels both in- and out-migration. The new data demonstrates that the notion that immigration operates outside the control of governmental policy is clearly wrong. Even relatively modest policy changes seem to have made a significant difference.

Source: Source: 2001 to 2019 public-use files of the American CommunitySurvey (ACS) and the 2000 decennial census.

Confidence intervals were calculated using parameter estimates usingACS Source and Accuracy statements.

1 To estimate out-migration, we use the following formula: new arrivals (growth + deaths) = out-migration. To estimate new arrivals, we can use the year of arrival information from Figure 2 and Table 1. However, arrival data in the ACS is by calendar year and so does not match growth in the total immigrant population year over year in the ACS. The total population is for July 1 of each year. To make the arrival numbers match the growth figures for 2010 to 2017, we take half of the arrivals from 2010 (to reflect the number coming in the second half of that year) and add it to the number who come 2011 through 2016. We add to this the number who came in the first half of 2017, shown in the blue bar for that year in Figure 2. This sums to 9.942 million arrivals mid-2010 to mid-2017. We perform the same calculation for 2017 to 2019, taking half of the arrivals from 2017, and using the figures for the first half of 2019. Total arrivals mid-2017 to mid-2019 equals 2.999 million. Based on the race, age, and gender of the immigrant population we estimate 2.102 million deaths among the immigrant population 2010 to 2017 and 643,000 2017 to 2019. Finally, growth 2010 to 2017 was 4.57 million and growth 2017 to 2019 was 407,000. Plugging in the numbers for the 2010 to 2017 period, we get: 9.942 million (4.570 million + 2.102 million) = 3.27 million or average out-migration of 467,000 a year. For the period 2017 to 2019, we get: 3 million (.407 million + .643 million) = 1.949 million or average out-migration of 975,000 a year.

2 Regions are defined in the following manner: East Asia: China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Japan, Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Other South Central Asia, Other Asia not specified; South Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka; Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies, Caribbean not Specified, Americas not Specified; Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Other Central America; South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Other South America; Middle East: Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Sudan; Europe: United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Other Northern Europe, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Other Western Europe, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Armenia, Other Southern Europe, Other Eastern Europe, Europe not specified; Sub-Saharan Africa: Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Western Africa not Specified, Other Africa not Specified, Eastern Africa not Specified; Oceania/Elsewhere: Australia, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Other U.S. Island Areas, Oceania not Specified, or at Sea, American Samoa. Latin America Other than Mexico includes the regions of Caribbean, Central America and South America.

Read this article:
New Census Bureau Data Indicates There Was a Large Increase in Out-Migration in the First Part of the Trump Administration - Immigration Blog

With the end of the fiscal year, federal agencies have begun publishing their annual reports, including reports on the number of aliens in federalBureau of Prisons (BOP) custody in FY 2019, and final workload totals from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for FY 2020. One theme runs through each drugs and the ties between immigration and the drug trade.

First, BOP, which is a component of the Department of Justice (DOJ). In accordance with Executive Order13768, "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States", DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are required to provide reports on the number of aliens in the custody of BOP, the U.S. Marshals Service, and in state prisons and local detention throughout the United States.

The resulting report is captioned "Alien Incarceration Report, Fiscal Year 2019", and it is broken down into quarterly totals. With respect to non-federal prisoners and detainees, the report notes: "The lack of comprehensive data on this topic is a noteworthy limitation of this report because state and local facilities account for approximately 90 percent of the total U.S. incarcerated population."

This coincides with a statement that I often make: No one really knows how many aliens let alone illegal aliens have committed crimes, because there is a dearth of data on the immigration status of criminal aliens. But all criminal aliens have committed crimes, by definition, and,in general, re-offend.

Based strictly on the BOP population, however, the statistics are staggering. Looking just at the fourth-quarter data, at the end of that quarter, 27,494 known or suspected aliens were in BOP custody. By way of comparison, as of October 15, 2020, there were a total of 125,905 inmates in BOP custody and an additional 14,013 federal inmates in privately managed facilities, as well as 15,115 federal inmates in other types of facilities (mostly on home confinement and in residential reentry centers, i.e."halfway houses").

Of the number of known or suspected aliens in BOP custody, 72 percent were confirmed to have no immigration status, including 61.7 percent who had been ordered removed, and 10.2 percent who were in removal proceedings. Three percent were here legally and in removal proceedings, and 2.8 percent had been granted relief or protection.

Of the known or suspected aliens in BOP custody at the end of the fourth quarter of FY 2019 with criminal convictions (a small number were in pre-trial detention), more than half (13,727) had committed drug trafficking or other drug-related offenses. Another 5.1 percent had committed fraud and 4 percent committed weapons offenses. Racketeering and continuing criminal enterprise offenses (including murder for hire) were the main offenses committed by an additional 3.7 percent. Sex offenders made up an additional 2 percent.

Just 31 percent were in for immigration-related offenses, such as alien smuggling or illegal reentry after deportation. It is important to note that this would likely not include many (if any) aliens who had been arrested for illegal entry as a first offense under section 275 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a misdemeanor for which aliens are usually given time served (meaning that they would never come into BOP custody).

Given that most crimes are prosecuted at the state and local levels, the fact that these individuals were serving federal time means that their offenses were particularly serious. This is especially true of the known or suspected aliens with drug convictions. You don't end up in U.S. Penitentiary Allenwood because you got caught on a street corner in Altoona with a nickel bag of dope.

Which brings me to the CBP statistics. In FY 2020, Border Patrol seized 809 pounds of the incredibly lethal narcotic fentanyl, a 258 percent increase over FY 2019 (when agents seized 226 pounds of the drug). As CDC has reported: "Deaths involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl are on the rise." Border Patrol is doing its part to reverse this trend.

Methamphetamine seizures by Border Patrol were also up year-to-year by 44 percent (20,795 pounds as compared to 14,434 pounds), as were cocaine seizures, by 31 percent (15,360 pounds vs. 11,682 pounds).

As I explained in a September post, these increases in drug seizures are likely (at least in part) a function of the fact that, with fewer aliens entering illegally in FY 2020 (400,651 alien apprehensions along the Southwest border, compared to 851,508 in FY 2019), Border Patrol agents were better able to nab smugglers.

Such seizures likely also explain why such a large number of known or suspected aliens in BOP custody have drug convictions. Get caught dealing fentanyl on the streets of Baltimore (which had 692 opioid-related deaths in 2017), you will go to the city jail or state prison (assuming your case doesn't get dropped). Get caught hauling meth over the Southwest border, and you are looking at federal time (and likely to get it).

None of this is to say that aliens are more likely to use or sell drugs within the United States than the general population as a whole. But, of the aliens who end up in federal prison, most have committed some pretty serious drug offenses. And the border is at least one conduit by which those drugs reach the streets of this country to begin with.

Remember for as good as CBP generally and the Border Patrol, in particular, are at catching drug smugglers, they can't stop them all. More and better barriers along the border would help, but that is an argument for another day.

Read more:
End-of-Year Totals on BOP Criminal Aliens, Border Patrol Drug Seizures - Immigration Blog

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) The federal government has built 109 miles of new or replacement border wall in the El Paso Sector the past couple of years and more is coming.

Dozens of miles of 30-foot steel bollard barrier are rising on empty expanse between Santa Teresa and Columbus, New Mexico and construction is picking up in El Pasos Lower Valley.

Were hoping that by the end of January were done with seven projects. Thatll give us 150 miles of solid, 30-foot steel bollard wall to replace old mesh. Now, thats a barrier because we still have places in Deming (New Mexico) with chain-link, sticks with barbed wire and some vehicle (obstacle), said Border Patrol Sector Chief Gloria I. Chavez.

The work is part of the Trump administrations goal of building or replacing 450 miles of border wall by the end of the year. The construction has taken on added urgency and controversy as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage along the border and the Nov. 3 presidential election draws near.

As he did in Tucson, Arizona last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark A. Morgan came to El Paso on Wednesday to pitch the importance of better walls and a firm immigration policy in the era of COVID-19.

In an exclusive interview with Border Report, Morgan said it would be a mistake for any future administration to give up on wall construction or try to reverse Trump administration programs like the Migrant Protection Protocols that stopped the migrant surge from Central America last year and have discouraged further mass migration.

By February of this year, we had reduced illegal immigration by 75%. We went from releasing 230,000 individuals in the U.S. which we never heard from again in Fiscal Year 2019 to (a few thousands) by 2020. We all but ended catch and release. Things changed because of the tools this president has provided us, Morgan said.

He added that if those things stop, the 140,000 unauthorized migrants who were caught or surrendered themselves at the border in May 2019 would be nothing compared to the number of people who will come.

Whats going to come next is going to make that look like childs play. You can take that to the bank, Morgan said.

Fernando Garcia, executive director of El Pasos Border Network for Human Rights, said Morgans comments this close to the election show the Trump administration is still trying to score political points with conservative voters through immigration fearmongering.

Trump thinks he can continue to use migrants to overcome his political troubles, Garcia said. A new administration has to reverse those racist and erroneous policies. Migration has many root causes and is part of the history of this country. Immigration should be treated as humane and necessary, not as a criminal act. That generates terror for political purposes.

Morgan also talked about the growing number of stash houses along the border where smugglers pack migrants into crowded, unsanitary quarters with no regard for the spread of the coronavirus. In El Paso, at least seven such houses have been raided recently.

Even before, stash houses were unsanitary (and) crowded, but now you throw in the pandemic, no social distancing, no (personal protective equipment) no hand sanitizer and thats an active Petri dish, he said.

The acting CBP commissioner railed against transnational criminal organizations that for decades have made money on the backs of people looking for jobs or a better life in the United States. But he also chastised the migrants whore risking catching or spreading COVID-19 making the trip now.

I used to go hard after the cartels, those disgusting, despicable organizations [] Im still going after them, but the immigrants themselves who are trying to enter in the middle of a global pandemic, they have a responsibility, too, he said. They are knowingly and willingly allowing themselves into stash houses and tractor-trailers [] They have a responsibility to listen to the medical experts across the world and not try to illegally enter this country.

Morgan toured the border wall along a stretch in El Paso that shows the weathered 18-foot mesh barrier and towering new 30-foot steel bollard.

The first can still be climbed over or cut by migrants or their guides, while the latter poses a formidable barrier.

This makes it impossible for the average young adult male to shimmy up like they used to. Unfortunately, were still having people that are trying and falling and injuring themselves, he said. Were trying to get the message across to [] first of all, you shouldnt come to this country illegally and you sure as heck shouldnt try to climb over a 30-foot steel wall with an anti-climb plate. Youre going to get seriously injured.

Standing a few yards from the Rio Grande, Morgan reflected on the extreme drug violence going on across the border. Juarez, Mexico this year has seen some 1,400 homicides. Most of them are drug related, according to authorities there, and many of the victims have been tortured, mutilated, beheaded or burned.

Its something that should resonate with the American people. Why do you think theres so much violence on the Mexican side? Why are the cartels fighting each other? Theyre fighting over the drug smuggling and human trafficking corridors leading into the United States, he said.

That violence rarely spills into American border cities like El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville, Texas. Law enforcement and drug experts say thats because of U.S. vigilance and Mexican criminals fear of an American justice system that cannot be coerced.

Morgan said the border wall is adding a layer of protection against criminals just across the river.

Its not just a wall, its a wall system. Its got integrated lighting, technology and access roads. Everything that the experts, the Border Patrol agents out in the front lines, those who risk their lives every day, need, Morgan said.

El Paso has had border walls, fences or barriers for decades, and no demonstrators have been spotted around construction areas.

But in Arizona, the debate over wall construction on sacred Indigenous grounds and wildlife environs has led to confrontation and arrests.

On Wednesday, Morgan said he wasnt worried about the protests.

Weve had different types of barriers for decades. Were just building them better and faster, he said. If somebody wants to protest, knock yourself out. I totally support their First Amendment right to protest, you just have to do it legally. If youre going to go throw yourself in the middle of the wall to stop construction, thats not legal. Were going to arrest you and take you away, and construction is going to keep going on.

Visit theBorderReport.com homepagefor the latest exclusive stories and breaking news about issues along the United States-Mexico border.

Originally posted here:
CBP acting head stresses need for border wall during tour of construction site in El Paso - WANE

Andrew Forrester, Michelangelo Landgrave, and Ipublished anew working paper on illegal immigration and crime in Texas. Our paper is slated to appear as achapter in avolume published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Like our other research on illegal immigration and crime in Texas, this working paper uses data collected by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) that records and keeps the immigration statuses of those arrested and convicted of crimes in Texas. As far as weve been able to tell, and weve filed more than 50 state FOIA requests to confirm, Texas is the only state that records and keeps the immigration statuses of those entering the criminal justice system. Texas gathers this information because its runs arrestee biometric information through Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases that identify illegal immigrants. Unlike other states, Texas DPS keeps the results of these DHS checks that then allows amore direct look at immigrant criminality by immigration status.

The results aresimilar to our other work on illegal immigration and crime in Texas. In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants, 535 per 100,000 legal immigrants, and 1,422 per 100,000 nativeborn Americans. The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45 percent below that of nativeborn Americans in Texas. The general pattern of nativeborn Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowestholds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes.

Since Texas is the only state that records and keeps the immigration statuses of those arrested, we cant make adirect applestoapples comparison between Texas and other states (every state should record and keep this information so we can answer this important question). It could be that illegal immigrants in Texas are the most lawabiding illegal immigrant population in the country or the least lawabiding. Until other states start recording and keeping the data, wewont know for sure. But there is much suggestive evidence that the illegal immigrant criminal convictionrate in Texas is comparable to their crime rates across the country.

For instance, the ratio of the nationwide estimated illegal immigrant incarceration rate to the native and legal immigrant incarceration rates is very similar to the same ratios for the criminal conviction rate in Texas. The similarity is evidence that the pattern in Texas holds nationwide, at least to the extent that convictions and incarcerations are correlated. The only way that illegal immigrants could have ahigher incarceration rate is if there is something seriously wrong with our method of estimating their total population in the United States and the actual number is much smalleror we are seriously undercounting illegal immigrants who are incarcerated. Neither is very likely, but its important to mention the possibility.

We go abit further in this working paperby looking at how local variation in the illegal immigrant population is correlated withcrimerates on the country level in Texas for the years 20122018. The relationship between changes in the illegal immigrant population and crime is known as an elasticity. The elasticity between two variables estimates how one variable, the illegal immigrant population here, affects another variable like the number of illegal immigrant convictions or the total crime rate. We control for the number of law enforcement officers per capita. We basically find no relationship. The only statistically significant relationship worth reporting is anegative association between total violent crime convictions and the illegal immigrant share with apoint estimate of -0.104 that is significant at the 5percent level. This exception suggests that a10 percent increase in the illegal immigrants share of the population is associated with a1 percent decline in violent crime convictions in our sample of Texas counties.

Our working paper isnt the only new research on illegal immigration and crime. Christian Gunadi, an economist who recently graduated from the University of California Riverside, examined how the DACA program affected crime rates. Gunadi tested the theory, based on Gary Beckers crime research, that issuing work permits to young illegal immigrants increasesthe opportunity cost of committing crime by making it easier for them to be legally employed. Gunadi found, when he analyzed the individuallevel incarceration data, that there was no evidence that DACA statistically significantly affected the incarceration rate of young illegal immigrants. Gunadi also looked at crime on the state level and found that the implementation of DACA is associated with areduction in property crime rates such that an additional DACA application approved per 1,000 population is associated with a1.6 percent decline in the overall property crime rate. That second finding is consistent with the Beckerian crime model.

Other recent research into immigration and crime similarly find no relationship between immigration and crime or aslightly negative relationship, but their methods are not as robust so Idont place as much weight on them. However, arecent working paper written by Conor Norris and published at the Center for Growth and Opportunity used differenceindifferences and the synthetic control method to see how the passage of SB-1070in Arizona in 2010, which was an immigration enforcement law, affected crime there relative to other states. It found that violent crime in Arizona increased by about 20 percent under both methods.

Norris paper is interesting and worth developing further. For instance, most of the research on the economics of crime focuses on how higher opportunity costs lowers crime rates. In that way, increasing legal employment opportunities can lower crime while making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to work can push some of them toward committing crimes because theyd have less to lose. In 2007, the Arizona state legislature passed the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) that mandated EVerify on January 1, 2008. EVerify is intended to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. Forrester and Iwrote ashort blog post showing that the passage of LAWA may have increased the monthly flow of noncitizens into Arizona state prisons, but the effect was shortlived as many illegal immigrants either left the state or figured out how to get around EVerify.

The above new research and the vast quantity of papers on how immigration doesnt increase crime and frequently lowers it leads to an interesting question: Why do so many people think that immigration increases crime? The Christian Science Monitor had an interview segment recently where they asked criminologists why so many Americans think immigrants increase crime even though the weight of evidence says that they are less likely to commit crimes than nativeborn Americans. According to arecent Gallup poll, 42 percent of respondents thought that immigrants increase crime, 7percent thought that immigrants decrease crime, and 50 percent said immigrants didnt affect crime.

Much of the effect could be that people who dont like immigration could just ascribe all types of negative behavior to them in order to justify their dislike. This probably explains alot of it, but it would be adisservice to stop there. We must examine the possible other reasons. Another potential reasonis that many people think that immigrant criminals could have been prevented from coming in the first place, so theres more of afocus on their crimes (availability bias) because many people think that they are more preventable than crimes committed by nativeborn Americans. In that way, many people could think that allowing any crime by immigrants is achoice and that crime could go away at the stroke of apen. Thats not how the world works and that doesnt explain why so many people think that crime rates go up with immigration, but if that form of control bias is combined with aconflation between the number of crimes and the crime rate then the mistake is understandable if not based on an accurate understanding of the variables.

Another reason could be that nativeborn Americans who have the same ethnicity asrecent immigrants might have amuch higher incarceration rate, so the respondents to these surveys lump them in together and conclude that immigrants boost the crime rate. Among nativeborn Americans, Hispanics do have ahigher incarceration rate but Asians have amuch lower rate. This is further complicated by the fact that Puerto Ricans, who are not immigrants, likely have the highest incarceration rate of any Hispanic subgroup in the United States (see Table 1) and it would be quite silly for someone to blame immigrants for the higher Puerto Rican incarceration rate.

There is more and more evidence that immigrants, regardless of legal status, are less likely to commit crimes than nativeborn Americans. However, asubstantial number of Americans still think that immigration increases crime. As more evidence builds over time, we can only hope than Americans respond by updating their opinions so that they fit the facts.

Read the rest here:
New Research on Illegal Immigration and Crime - Cato Institute