Do immigrants commit more crimes? Spoiler Alert: Nope

New Stanford study shows immigrant crime rate is lower than other Americans

Former President Trump and other conservative politicians have argued for years that immigrants are the cause of increasing crime in the U.S.  But a new study from Stanford University shows that has never been true.  In fact, immigrants are 60% less likely to be convicted of crimes than U.S. born individuals.

The study, headed by Ran Abramitzky, Assistant Dean of Social Sciences at Stanford University’s School of Hunanities and Sciences, looked that the relationship between immigrantion and crime over the last 140 years.  “Many of the expectations we had in mind turned out not to be right when we looked at the data,” Abramitzky said. Differences in age or education levels had no bearing on the differences in crime rates. And more recent data showed even wider gaps between crime rates of immigrants vs. native born Americans.

“Immigrants are far from the criminal element that anti immigrant politicians claim them to be,” Abramitzky said.

The U.S. Citizenship Foundation continues to support qualified immigrants earning their full American citizenship with our free online citizenship classes on Zoom. Go to https://yourcitizenship.org to learn more.