The Imaginary Link Between Immigration And Crime

Hateful political rhetoric about immigrants is so widespread these days that it would be unfair to refer to it as solely an American problem. In places like Germany, and even in South Africa, politicians have for years blamed foreign migrants for crime, often without citing any data to back up their incendiary claims.

Earlier this year the American criminal justice non-profit outfit The Marshall Project published a piece that took a detailed look at similar claims in the United States — including how so-called sanctuary cities were supposedly 'safe havens' for predatory people, including 'illegal migrants' — and carefully analysed and compared immigration data with data about violent crime. What they found was a stark contrast to repeated claims insinuating a direct link between immigrants and crime.

Rather, what the researchers discovered was that even as immigrant populations had continued to rise nationwide, crime rates had consistently declined. Not only was there no direct link between increased migration and increased crime, it appeared the inverse was actually true in some cases: the 10 areas that had seen the largest increase in migration were also experiencing lower levels of crime than they had registered nearly 40 years ago, in 1980.  

Despite what the data clearly showed – that immigrants had no impact on worsening crime rates, and may even have resulted in reduced crime rates – opinion polls in the States showed that nearly half of all Americans believed immigrants made crime worse.

Wherever we live in the world, it's time we stopped using rhetoric to shape our opinions about who migrants are and the roles they play in our society. As the Marshall Project concludes, the American study is not the only one to show no link between migration and crime — and many other studies suggest migrants play an immensely positive role in the communities they join.