Motivated and ambitious foreigners are more likely to immigrate, and those individuals are less likely to be criminals. This could explain why immigrants are less likely to engage in “anti-social” behaviors than natives despite having …show more content…
Another possibility of course is that the federal government has employed more effective strategies regarding interior immigration and is catching and deporting those unlawful immigrants who are more likely to be criminals before they have a chance to be incarcerated.
Two broad studies that investigate immigrant criminality: Census data and the American Community Service (ACS) data, conclude that immigrants are less crime prone than the native-born population (Nowrasteh, Alex, 2015). These trends have also been found on a local level. Researchers Garth Davies and Jeffrey Fagan examined immigration crime in New York City and found that crime rates are not higher in areas with more immigrants. A comparative study was performed by Robert Sampson in the city of Chicago who concluded in his research that “Hispanic Americans do better on a wide range of social