One of the most common misconceptions about Mexican immigration is that there is a positive correlation between increasing immigration and crime rate. When asked whether “immigration is causally related to more crime”, 73% of Americans sampled in the General Social Survey believed the statement to be at some level true (Martinez 2008:63). Criminality based stereotypes surrounding recent immigrants (based in xenophobic nationalism) have been used to increase discriminatory immigration policies, further empower border patrol agencies along the Southern border, and increase animosity toward immigrants in many countries. Organizations such as The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) have
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A significant portion of President Trump’s political success can be attributed to his “hard line stance” on immigration; referring to Mexican immigrants in a pre-election debate as “bad hombres” and claiming that Mexico had unleashed the dregs of its society on United States cities, Trump gave the ultimate confirmation of these allegations against Mexican immigrants (Ross 2016). The opinions of critics and scholars in the area of immigration and crime are – for the most part – in dissent. Studies have shown that first generation immigrant communities actually have lower crime rates than similar neighborhoods, and that recent immigrants have lower rates of incarceration than those of native born individuals of the same national origin. This data directly contradicts the narratives popular among politicians and the media, begging the question: if not from fact, from where do these claims …show more content…
In the United States, the groups most ardent in their anti-immigration beliefs – often based on the supposed criminality of immigrants – are blue collar workers, retirees, and the financially vulnerable. There are a variety of reasons for this in blue collar workers (a conscious identity) and other financially vulnerable populations (often less conscious identities), the foremost being fragility of economic status for these groups. Immigrants are seen both as competitors in the job market as well as cultural competitors within lower-class neighborhoods, and during the 2008 recession Latin American immigrant populations served as the proverbial whipping-boy for laid-off industrial workers (Fry 2006). Scholten (1996) says that retirees, though often of the same economic status, hold this anti-immigrant sentiment for slightly different reasons. Retirees as a whole rely heavily on governmental assistance programs (e.g. Medicare, Social Security) and the belief that immigrants use an unfair share of government aid and are a burden on the U.S. taxpayer – who’s tax dollars could be going to other federal insurance programs benefiting the [older] citizens who have been theoretically funding them for their entire careers – has led to high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment. Many retirees seem caught
A significant portion of President Trump’s political success can be attributed to his “hard line stance” on immigration; referring to Mexican immigrants in a pre-election debate as “bad hombres” and claiming that Mexico had unleashed the dregs of its society on United States cities, Trump gave the ultimate confirmation of these allegations against Mexican immigrants (Ross 2016). The opinions of critics and scholars in the area of immigration and crime are – for the most part – in dissent. Studies have shown that first generation immigrant communities actually have lower crime rates than similar neighborhoods, and that recent immigrants have lower rates of incarceration than those of native born individuals of the same national origin. This data directly contradicts the narratives popular among politicians and the media, begging the question: if not from fact, from where do these claims …show more content…
In the United States, the groups most ardent in their anti-immigration beliefs – often based on the supposed criminality of immigrants – are blue collar workers, retirees, and the financially vulnerable. There are a variety of reasons for this in blue collar workers (a conscious identity) and other financially vulnerable populations (often less conscious identities), the foremost being fragility of economic status for these groups. Immigrants are seen both as competitors in the job market as well as cultural competitors within lower-class neighborhoods, and during the 2008 recession Latin American immigrant populations served as the proverbial whipping-boy for laid-off industrial workers (Fry 2006). Scholten (1996) says that retirees, though often of the same economic status, hold this anti-immigrant sentiment for slightly different reasons. Retirees as a whole rely heavily on governmental assistance programs (e.g. Medicare, Social Security) and the belief that immigrants use an unfair share of government aid and are a burden on the U.S. taxpayer – who’s tax dollars could be going to other federal insurance programs benefiting the [older] citizens who have been theoretically funding them for their entire careers – has led to high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment. Many retirees seem caught