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An article in the Economist from last year, arguing for open borders says:

If lots of people migrated from war-torn Syria, gangster-plagued Guatemala or chaotic Congo, would they bring mayhem with them? It is an understandable fear (and one that anti-immigrant politicians play on), but there is little besides conjecture and anecdotal evidence to support it. Granted, some immigrants commit crimes, or even headline-grabbing acts of terrorism. But in America the foreign-born are only a fifth as likely to be incarcerated as the native-born. In some European countries, such as Sweden, migrants are more likely to get into trouble than locals, but this is mostly because they are more likely to be young and male. A study of migration flows among 145 countries between 1970 and 2000 by researchers at the University of Warwick found that migration was more likely to reduce terrorism than increase it, largely because migration fosters economic growth.

Is the highlighted claim about the US (America = USA, no doubt) found[ed] in credible research? It obviously doesn't mesh too well with US presidential claims... and the difference in odds claimed is pretty large (and not fitting the pattern from some EU countries, mentioned in the next sentence.)

Fizz
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  • If a source doesn't include per-capita numbers (or enough info to calculate them), i'd suspect equivocation between "1/5 as likely to be incarcerated" and "1/5 of incarcerated people are immigrants". – cHao Jul 10 '18 at 13:00
  • There's a difference between "being incarcerated" and "comminging a crime". The former implies successful apprehention and prosecution. There's multiple factors that bias the former number against being as likely among foreign born. – user5341 Jul 10 '18 at 14:06
  • @user5341: it occurred to me that some illegal immigrants might just be deported (instead). But without looking at some study (hopefully the number is not from thin air) it's hard to tell what exactly is included or not in the stats. – Fizz Jul 10 '18 at 14:22
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    "doesn't mesh too well with US presidential claims". These days that's not a reason to doubt it. – DJClayworth Jul 10 '18 at 15:10
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    Something to consider here: Most of those people in the US had to keep their noses clean to be able to immigrate in the first place. The EU currently has a large number of people whose backgrounds haven't been checked. Of course you would expect more criminality amongst the EU immigrants. – Loren Pechtel Jul 11 '18 at 04:55

3 Answers3

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It's not one fifth as likely, it's about one third as likely. Depending on exactly what you mean.

The Cato Institute Study of Criminal Immigrant Demographics compared figures on incarceration rates of native born Americans, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.

The incarceration rate was 1.53 percent for natives, 0.85 percent for illegal immigrants, and 0.47 percent for legal immigrants

In other words 1.53% of all native born Americans were imprisoned, compared with 0.85% of those in the US illegally and 0.47% of those who came to the US legally.

Statistically a native born American is about 3 times as likely to be imprisoned as a legal immigrant, and about twice as likely as an illegal immigrant. It's about three times more compared with an immigrant of any kind.

DJClayworth
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  • The report linked in the answer says there were 122,939 incarcerated illegal immigrants ages 18-54. How is that 0.85%? There are only 12 million illegal immigrants, and only 10 million in that age range. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Unauthorized%20Immigrant%20Population%20Estimates%20in%20the%20US%20January%202014_1.pdf It seems that the report uses a big number for illegal immigrant population, to get a low incarceration rate. Figure 2 even claims that illegal immigrants are 9.06% of the population. – DavePhD Jul 10 '18 at 19:25
  • Definite figures for illegal immigration are hard to find (surprise!). Since the question is about immigration in general, it doesn't actually make a lot of difference. – DJClayworth Jul 10 '18 at 19:36
  • The report says "2,007,502 natives, 122,939 illegal immigrants, and 63,994 legal immigrants incarcerated in 2014. The incarceration rate was 1.53 percent for natives, 0.85 percent for illegal immigrants, and 0.47 percent for legal immigrants". This corresponds to 131 million natives, 14.4 million illegal immigrants and 13.6 million legal immigrants. They are exaggerating the number of foreign born relative to native born. – DavePhD Jul 10 '18 at 20:33
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    @DavePhD The article doesn't say "*non-citizen* foreign-born" so why would you assume naturalized citizens should be omitted from the calculation? – 1006a Jul 10 '18 at 22:49
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    According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Immigration_and_emigration) about 39 million of the US are immigrants (including citizens), and about a third are probably in the 18-65 age range, so the figures seem right to me. – DJClayworth Jul 11 '18 at 00:28
  • @DJClayworth The 2014 ACS (which the report said it used) concluded 41,056,885 foreign born. The report says it used the age range 18-54 (not 18-65). The 2014 ACS data says 57.0% were in that age range, which is 23,402,424. So the overall foreign born rate should be (122,939 + 63,994)/23,402,424 = 0.80%. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk So answer really is "*two* times more compared with an immigrant of any kind" instead of "three times more compared with an immigrant of any kind" – DavePhD Jul 11 '18 at 02:30
  • @1006a I agree completely. "Legal immigrants" needs to include both citizens who immigrated and legal immigrant who are not yet citizens. – DavePhD Jul 11 '18 at 02:33
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    I am worried about a confounding factor: Are undocumented (and documented) immigrants simply deported rather than incarcerated, giving misleading figures? [This is from ignorance; I haven't read deep enough to know either way.] – Oddthinking Jul 11 '18 at 08:55
  • Is there any indication as to how many of those 0.85% of incarcerated illegal immigrants are incarcerated for illegal immigration? – Mark Jul 11 '18 at 23:35
  • People imprisoned for immigration offences were not included in the study. – DJClayworth Jul 12 '18 at 02:05
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The fraction of people in the United States who were born elsewhere was 12.9% according to the most recent census. (Many of these are citizens, only 7.2% of the population is foreign born non-citizens).

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons 20.1% of inmates were not citizens of the United States.

So, for federal incarceration, foreign born are clearly incarcerated at a higher rate.

According to the Congressional Research Service document Interior Immigration Enforcement: Criminal Alien Programs, when state and local inmates are included, non-citizens were 7.4% of the incarcerated population in 2012 (the last year that California cooperated with federal requests for citizenship information).

So as far as is known, non-citizens are incarcerated at similar rates to citizens, not one fifth the rate.

DavePhD
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    Hmm, your stats give a much worse ratio than even the Cato study... and I suspect they're not pro-immigration much. I wonder how may of those incarcerated in Federal prisons have committed their crimes outside the US, e.g. drug dealers extradited or flow-in more or less legally. – Fizz Jul 10 '18 at 14:33
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    @Fizz mine are only for federal inmates. If a good source is found for state and local inmates, the answer could be changed. However, the Department of Justice says that some states, such as California, refuse to provide citizenship data of prisoners, and other states under count non-citizen prisoners. See page 13 here: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p16.pdf – DavePhD Jul 10 '18 at 14:38
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    @Fizz - Cato is likely very pro-immigration. They are a libertarian think tank, not a conservative one, even if left wingers don't make fine distinctions – user5341 Jul 10 '18 at 14:38
  • @user5341: indeed, I checked their Wikipedia page; it mentions several times that Cato supports free movement, liberal immigration, etc. – Fizz Jul 10 '18 at 14:41
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    But I see there's a critique of this method: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/data-on-foreign-born-in-federal-prisons-says-little-about-overall-immigrant-criminality/ It does say (as I suspected): "It does appear, however, that the prevalence of undocumented and other immigrants is largely the result of immigration enforcement priorities, not necessarily increased rates of overall criminality among immigrants. Experts have noted that the large number of individuals imprisoned for federal immigration offenses contributes significantly to the size of the federal prison foreign population. " – Fizz Jul 10 '18 at 14:45
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    @Fizz According to this: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jul/10/larry-oconnor/conservative-host-noncitizens-are-25-federal-inmat/ 19,000 of 48,470 federal non-citizen inmates are incarcerated for immigration law violations, so if the OP claim was changed to exclude immigration crimes, the 20.1% number could be reduced to about 12%. – DavePhD Jul 10 '18 at 15:12
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    I gather then that the Federal Bureau of Prisons currently counts about 2000 children as incarcerated criminals while the Bureau of Justice Statistics does not. – David Hammen Jul 10 '18 at 16:55
  • @DavidHammen it's more like 11,800 children, but they are in Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, custody, and not considered criminals. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/resource/unaccompanied-alien-children-frequently-asked-questions – DavePhD Jul 10 '18 at 17:09
  • On page 5, it appears that 6.2% of the incarcerated population were non-citizens. Their estimated adjustment for missing CA data gets it up to 6.9%. Which page gets to 7.4%? – Andrew Lazarus Jul 10 '18 at 20:33
  • @AndrewLazarus I got 7.4% from table 1 for 2012, the last year to include California. – DavePhD Jul 10 '18 at 20:41
  • "So, for federal incarceration, foreign born are clearly incarcerated at a higher rate." This does not follow from your data. If native-born citizens are incarcerated at a higher rate than non-native, then they could still be imprisoned at a higher rate than non citizens. – DJClayworth Jul 11 '18 at 00:36
  • @DJClayworth Since 20.1% is greater that 12.9%, my statement is true. At least 20.1% of federal prisoners are foreign born. – DavePhD Jul 11 '18 at 02:44
  • I could imagine that illegal immigrants will try hard to not commit any petty crimes, because it could lead to removal for very little gain. If people are willing to commit serious crimes, that's no consideration anymore. (Being an illegal immigrant would likely stop you from shoplifting, but wouldn't stop you from killing your spouse). So I would guess the statistics would be different for the many small crimes and the fewer more serious crimes. – gnasher729 Jul 12 '18 at 21:53
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Whenever immigration is discussed, you always have to be wary about conflating "immigration" with "illegal immigration". Or, more relevantly, people purposely misleading based on it.

In this case, the argument is, "People in the US that weren't born in the US commit less crime, so we should have more legal immigration." But the problem is, they're including the stat for legal immigrants - people that are already part of the population being admitted for citizenry (which will be part of the country whether we have 'Open Borders' or not.) Instead, the question is, are illegal immigrants causing more/less crime than native citizens?

That's a lot tighter of a question. From some quick googling, it looks like it's true - illegal immigrants cause less crime (https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-reform-bulletin/criminal-immigrants-their-numbers-demographics-countries) - but it's definitely not the "a fifth as likely".

Short Story: Basically, the person making the claim is using slight-of-hand to get a more compelling number... but the actual number still goes in their favor (just not to an extent that it should probably drive immigration policy.)

Kevin
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    It would help if you added some numbers to your answer. If we go with the Cato study, the percentage of incarcerated legal immigrants is 0.47%, while for illegals is 0.85%, compared to 1.53% for natives, so that's a approx 1:3 ratio when only legals vs natives are considered and slightly.less than 1:2 (1:1.8) on illegal vs native. – Fizz Jul 10 '18 at 14:30
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    No the question does not mention 'illegal immigration' at all. Nor does the article it is sourced from. You are not answering the question asked. – DJClayworth Jul 10 '18 at 15:10
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    The question didn't explicitly say "illegal immigration", but it *did* say "Open Borders". (As a general rule of thumb, people arguing for Open Borders tend not to ever use the phrase 'Illegal Immigration', since it kinda emphasizes that the people it's talking about are doing an illegal act in circumventing regular immigration.) Anyways, my answer is basically, "It doesn't matter whether or not the one-fifth stat is correct, because it's not relevant to the discourse anyways." – Kevin Jul 10 '18 at 15:19
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    Open Borders is not synonymous with 'illegal immigration'. Even if it were the question is explicitly asking about immigrants, not illegal immigrants. Feel free to read whatever subtext you like into the article, but the claim is clear and it's about immigration in general. – DJClayworth Jul 10 '18 at 18:24
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    -1: The question is about **foreign born**. You answer is about **"illegal" immigrants**. If you want to add a comment warning people to not conflate foreign-born versus native born, citizen versus non-citizen, and documented versus undocumented, great. If you want to *also* give other stats for context, to show the original question is misleading, great. But you should answer the right question. I would delete this answer outright as "not an answer", but it just so happens that your reference ALSO addresses the actual question, so maybe this is hope for a fix here. – Oddthinking Jul 10 '18 at 22:35