Opponents of immigration often lament the fact that while the United States once attracted high-quality immigrants from countries such as Europe, it is now overwhelmed by immigrants from “less developed” countries. A recent NBER paper by Ran Abramitsky, Leah Pratt Boustin, Elisa Jacome, Santiago Pérez, and Juan David Torres suggests that the golden age of immigration is in the present, not the past.
Contrary to this anti-immigrant rhetoric, we document that as a group, immigrant men have had lower incarceration rates than U.S.-born men over the past 150 years of American history. We combine newly collected Census data (1870-1940) with the Census/ACS sample (1950-2020) to create a nationally representative set of immigrants and U.S.-born persons from 1870 to the present. Build incarceration rates. From 1870 to 1950, the incarceration rate for immigrants was slightly lower than that for U.S.-born men. However, since 1960, immigrants are significantly more likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born people, even though immigrants as a group are relatively younger, more likely to be non-white, have lower incomes, and have lower educational attainment. became low. It is often associated with involvement in the criminal justice system. Immigrants are now 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born men overall and 30% less likely to be incarcerated compared to U.S.-born white men. Similar incarceration rates for immigrants and U.S.-born people in the past, and lower incarceration rates for immigrants today, are broadly consistent with previous studies documenting incarceration disparities between immigrants and U.S.-born people in specific states and time periods ( Moehling and Piehl 2009, 2014; Butcher and Piehl 1998b, 2007).
When I point out the lower crime rates of immigrants, people often respond that we should compare their crime rates to those of white American-born Americans. I always found it strange. Because these were often the very people who opposed “identity politics” and argued that people should be judged based on their merits, not the color of their skin. If we insist on comparing immigrants only to white Americans, isn’t that implicitly suggesting that non-white residents of the United States are not truly Americans?
In any case, it is now clear that even native-born whites are more likely to engage in criminal activity than immigrants. While there may be good arguments against increased immigration, it is becoming increasingly clear that the following five arguments are discredited.
1. The United States is at risk of overpopulation. (The U.S. fertility rate (births/woman) has fallen to 1.7 and is still falling.)
2. Immigration causes increased unemployment. (The unemployment rate is determined by monetary policy and regulations such as minimum wage laws.)
3. Immigrants cause more crime. (Immigrants make us safer because crime increases at a lower rate than the total population.)
4. Immigration lowers wages for unskilled workers. (Wages for low-income earners have recently risen faster than wages for higher-income earners.)
5. Immigrants end up supporting one political party. (Immigrants are rapidly adopting the political views of native-born Americans.)
And that doesn’t even include the long-discredited claim, popular in the 1990s, that immigrants don’t learn English.
