Safety and Immigrants

A very interesting article that argues that immigrants don't make cities more dangerous but do the exact opposite, they make cities safer.

Maybe Arizona's Governor should have consulted the experts and police first.

From Newsweek...

A new study by Tim Wadsworth of the University of Colorado evaluates the various factors behind the statistics that show a massive drop in crime during the 1990s at a time when immigration rose dramatically. Wadsworth argues not only that “cities with the largest increases in immigration between 1990 and 2000 experienced the largest decreases in homicide and robbery,” which we knew, but that after considering all the other explanations, rising immigration “was partially responsible.”

Experience has shown that when immigrants think they’ll be nailed for immigration offenses, they stop cooperating with law enforcement. The intelligence needed to find and fight hard-core criminals, whatever their immigration status, will be harder to get. People who feel themselves singled out for discrimination will withdraw more and more into ghettos, increasingly marginalized from American life instead of integrated into it. Smart cops understand all this perfectly well.

There are pretty compelling data to support the argument that immigrants—even presumably “illegal” immigrants—do not make cities more dangerous. But what mechanism about such immigration makes cities safer? Robert J. Sampson, head of the sociology department at Harvard, has suggested that, among other things, immigrants move into neighborhoods abandoned by locals and help prevent them from turning into urban wastelands. They often have tighter family structures and mutual support networks, all of which actually serve to stabilize urban environments. As Sampson told me back in 2007, “If you want to be safe, move to an immigrant city.”