Immigration Research

QUESTIONS:

• (Research Topic): Do illegal immigrants substantially contribute to crimes and arrests more than the average American? (I am interested in this topic because I find crime statistics intriguing, and I am also very curious about the role that illegal immigration plays in those crimes.)
• Do any of the various studies on this topic take into consideration the fact that the population of undocumented immigrants is significantly less than the population of the general public?
• Why is it rarely acknowledged that coming to America illegally is... against the law?
• What counts as a substantial contribution?

Over the past few weeks, I have been researching immigration to the United States. More specifically, I have been looking into whether or not illegal immigrants actually contribute to crimes in our country. Now, immigration generally creates emotional and heated debates among people, which generally comes from a lack of knowledge or research into the topic, or sometimes just an absence of basic human kindness. Naturally, for every "fact", there is an equal and opposite "fact". While researching, I did the best that I could to find opposing arguments and use my judgement to determine what I believed to be true. Through my research and reasoning, I have concluded that illegal immigrants are arrested for more federal crimes than native-born Americans are, and, accounting for immigration crimes, commit more crimes than the average American.

Before we get to the grand finale of why I believe my thesis statement to be true (I have to keep you in suspense for a few minutes), it is important to first understand a brief history of immigration in the United States. According to History, it wasn’t a crime to enter the U.S.A. without authorization until after the early 20th century. After all, the border patrol was created less than a century ago, in 1924. Additionally, it was concerned with more than just people coming from Mexico. The longest-lasting impact on Mexican migrants has been made by Section 1325 of Title 8 in the U.S. Code. Section 1325 states that unlawful entry into the country is a federal misdemeanor on the first violation, and a felony on the second. Fool me once, right? To this day, the debate over section 1325 continues, with related causes becoming major topics in the upcoming presidential race.

But enough of the history side of things, there isn’t much I can do about it at the moment. What I can control, however, is my opinion on the matter at hand. The first major source I came by during my research was by one Alex Nowrasteh. According to CATO, Nowrasteh is the director of immigration for one of their branches. He is also a published author many times over, has appeared on many podcasts, and has been on the news a lot. Nowrasteh conducted a study late last year which analyzed Texas’ records of various crimes committed by illegal immigrants per 100,000 compared to native-born Americans and legal immigrants, the latter of whom I am not too concerned about. I won’t bore you with every detail, so long story short, illegal immigrants were significantly less likely to be convicted of homicides, sex crimes, and larceny than native-born Americans. They were also less likely to be arrested than native-born Americans. One obvious issue with this is that Texas is only one out of fifty states, but the data here seems to support the idea that illegal immigrants don't commit crimes at nearly the same rate that native-born Americans do.

Matt Palumbo, a writer over at The Dan Bongino Show, disagrees with Mr. Nowrasteh's point. Keep in mind that Palumbo and Nowrasteh are writing for two very different types of organizations, with Palumbo being a political commentator and entertainer, and Nowrasteh writing for CATO, a prominent libertarian think tank. Now this doesn't mean that Palumbo can't be right, but what he says should be taken with more grains of salt than what Nowrasteh says. I won’t bore you with all of the details here either, but here’s the gist. Palumbo argues that illegal immigrants have trouble committing a crime in the U.S. more than once because they are generally deported at the end of their sentence. Native-born Americans, however, can essentially commit a crime as many times as they are released from jail. Also, Texas is among only one other state, Florida, where illegals have committed less crimes than natives. (Keep in mind that this is only out of five states, the others being Arizona, California, and New York.) Simply put, Texas does not represent the country as a whole when it comes to illegal immigrants’ crime rates. Like I already stated, however, anything that Palumbo says should be taken with the fact that he is somewhat of an entertainer in mind.

When looking at smaller subsections of the crime world, it seems that illegal immigrants do, in fact, commit less than native-born Americans. However, more illegal immigrants are arrested overall at a federal level than native-born Americans. According to BJS, illegal immigrants only accounted for 37% of federal arrests in 1998, but now account for around 64% of federal arrests. Why the drastic increase? It appears that around 95% of these arrests are for immigration crimes, which says a whole lot about the insane number of people coming into the country illegally. If one wants to get technical, which I do, 100% of illegal immigrants have a crime under their belt: coming into our country illegally. This may not matter to a lot of people but it really does to me. Our country is practically built on immigration, but not just immigration, legal immigration, and I could not be more thankful to those people who pioneered the United States as we know it. But when people completely disregard the system that we have set in place to protect our country, it's a crime, plain and simple. Sure, it isn't murder, theft, or rape, but in some cases it leads to those things. As we've seen, it doesn't lead to them as often as you might think, but if any murderers, thieves, or rapists who crossed illegally hadn't been able to do so, their victims would still be alive, still have their possessions, or wouldn't have suffered awful mental/physical trauma. So that's why I'm still going to hold onto the idea that illegal immigrants commit more crimes than the average American, because I think that it matters whether or not those victims could have been protected, or whether future victims can still be saved.

Big Bend, a Section of the U.S.-Mexico Border 

Section of Border Fence in La Joya, Texas

A Member of the U.S. Border Patrol

CATO Institute, "Criminal Immigrants in Texas in 2017: Illegal Immigrant Conviction Rates and Arrest Rates for Homicide, Sex Crimes, Larceny, and Other Crimes", Alex Nowrasteh, August 27, 2019

Snopes, "Were 10,150 Americans Killed by 'Illegal Immigrants' in 2018?", Dan Evon, December 26, 2019

History, "How Border-Crossing Became a Crime in the United States", Becky Little, July 1, 2019

The Dan Bongino Show, "Do Illegal Aliens Really Commit Fewer Crimes?", Matt Palumbo, September 10, 2018

CATO Institute, Alex Nowrasteh Bio

Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Immigration, Citizenship, and the Federal Justice System, 1998-2018", Mark Motivans, August 2019

Thinking About Success

1. Hard Work

2. Skill

3. Opportunity
4. Luck

In my opinion, people who say that luck does not exist aren't completely right, but they're close. I don't believe that luck has a very strong influence in the world, thus it's place at the bottom of my ranking. Luck is more of a perception than a reality. By that I mean that luck is life's subtle way of combining the first three words on the list, which manifests itself to those with low self confidence, who don't believe they have those attributes. This is why I say that the others are more important than luck. 

Without the right opportunities, very little can be done. The way I see it, opportunities are not provided by any sort of system, but by other people who've received the same opportunity that they wish to give. I feel that opportunity is more often confused with luck than these others are, and for good reason. When someone comes along and gives you the 'big break' that you've been searching for, it's not luck. It's more than likely because you have the skill or have put in the hard work to earn it.

While skill is extremely important, I feel that the concept is too often misinterpreted. Skills are not always dealt at birth, but can be learned throughout your entire life. And how do you learn a skill? With hard work. I rest my case.

Lastly, I think that hard work is the most important factor to success. Anyone can put in work, but what really matters is if those people are willing to. That's what hard work is: a test of will, which I would argue is one of the most important things to have when searching for success. Success has never come to anybody without somebody's hard work, nor will it ever. Hard work is recognizable by anybody who has the ability to give opportunities or teach skills, and it pays off enormously to be willing to do it.