Undocumented Immigration vs. Crime

Looking at the perspectives of people believing that the increase of illegal immigration correlates with violent crimes can be very worrisome. That would end up not being the truth. Non- citizens account for only 7% of the U.S. population yet people think that they are the cause of most crimes in the country (Spakovsky 2019). Believing that illegal immigrants causing a rise in crimes in the United States is one of the most debatable topics to date. Cases that involved the undocumented committing crimes would be overlooked because the public would believe that those people are at guilt despite the evidence. Ever since president Trump was elected, he would always make the public believe illegal immigrants would bring a significant amount of drugs and violence into the United States especially in his rallies around the states. However, the truth is that there is actually a decrease in violent crimes ever since immigration has increased since the 1900’s shown by this chart below.

According to several well known sources, all immigrants have a lower criminal incarceration rate and there are lower crime rates in the neighborhoods where they live (Nowrasteh 2019). The public would find that it is easier to place their blame of crimes on illegal immigrants as seen by the president’s actions so far this year. In January, president Trump signed three executive orders that would affect immigration in a big way such as border security and interior enforcement. The president had often talked about creating a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He requested that the wall be electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh (Scott 2019).

Based on recent data, there was a study on the conviction rates per 100,000 people of Texas in 2015 and they found that natives were more likely to commit a lot more crimes than those that are undocumented in the United States (Ingraham 2018). Data proves that undocumented immigrants would not commit as many crimes as native-born people here. The homicide category was the closest measure but larceny was committed far more by the natives born here.