Does immigration really increase crime?

Many people who oppose immigration say that it increases crime. But does immigration really affect the actual crime rate? Studying a country whose proportion of migrants has tripled in less than ten years, researchers find immigration significantly impacts people’s perceptions of crime but has no effect on actual crime.

The research shows that while migrants don’t cause crime rates to increase, false perceptions endure anyway.

What the researchers say: “Many people seem to believe a connection exists between crime and immigration. We wanted to explore why this is the case, by looking at the example of Chile, a country recently exposed to a massive influx of immigrants,” the research leader told us.

“In Chile, migrants represented close to 6.5 per cent of the population in 2018. Not only did the magnitude change, but also the composition of immigrants changed strongly in recent years, with the arrival of people from Venezuela and Haiti, a trend is similar to other Latin American countries,” he explained.

The researchers found that people who are more exposed to immigration inflows are more likely to rank crime as their biggest concern. They’re more likely to believe that crime is affecting their quality of life, and more likely to believe that they will be a victim of a crime soon.

However, those citizens weren’t any more likely to have been victims of any crime in the previous months. Nor did the number of homicides grow disproportionately in the municipalities where they live, according to the researchers. The researchers also found that not only do people become scared, but they also take action, such as installing more alarms or paying for private security. These misperceptions may be driven in part by local media, as crime-related fears and reactions are more significant in areas with a relatively large number of local media stations, say the researchers. Or, in the US, Fox “News.”

The researchers investigated whether a plausible explanation for people’s fears could be discrimination against certain types of immigrants. Interestingly, the researchers found that crime-related concerns are mainly driven by immigrants that don’t have ethnically European origins – suggesting that immigrants with European origins enjoy different status compared to other immigrant groups. They also found that the impact on citizens in terms of behavioral reactions, such as installing alarms, appear to be more pronounced when immigrants are less educated.

“Immigration is increasingly an important topic in contemporary political debates. And hostility towards immigrants has become a powerful component of far-right politics and extremist groups around the world,” the team members said.

“Our research demonstrates that the concerns of citizens and governments over the potential relationship between immigration and crime in Chile appear to be unfounded, which holds significant implications for policy,” they added.

So, what? This is the third research piece I’ve read recently that has come to the same conclusion. One of these dealt with the Southern states of the US, the second immigration into Thailand and the third Muslim immigration into Germany. Migration will become an even greater issue with climate change which will force large numbers of Middle Easterners, Africans and Central Americans to uproot and move—largely to Europe, the US, Canada and Australasia.

To say that these people are responsible for crime, is, I believe a reflection of a genetic disposition within all of us, and an assumption.

It is in our design specs to be wary and afraid of people who don’t look like us. This is as true in the business world as it is in societies. This tendency can be overcome by the new arrivals and those already there developing commonalities. It’s important for arrivals to be seen to be trying to fit in with the culture of the land they’ve come to or the company they’ve joined.

The assumption is that poorer people are more prone to crime—something that a number of studies have shown to be untrue. Anyone can be driven to crime if they feel that their life, or job, is at risk or what they have will be taken from them.

What has been shown to be true is that inequality leads to crime. The greater the inequality in a country, the higher the crime rate. An interesting study done a few years ago showed that immigration into a country of high inequality did lead to increasing crime—by the native population.