by Sue Weishar, Ph.D.
In his first State of Union address, President Trump repeatedly linked immigration with gang violence, murder, and terrorism. This, of course, was not surprising from someone who has made demonizing and deporting undocumented immigrants and gutting legal immigration a major focus of his Administration. Notably missing from his speech were any facts supporting the notion that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than nativeborn Americans. There is good reason for this: over a century’s worth of social science research has consistently found that immigrants are no more likely to engage in criminal activity than persons born in the U.S.
One of the earliest studies on immigration was conducted by the Industrial Commission, a body appointed by President William McKinley to investigate questions pertaining to immigration, business, and labor. In 1901, the commission issued a special report that found that “foreign-born whites were less criminal than native whites.”1 Although the United States Immigration Commission, formed by Congress in 1907 to study the impact of recent immigration to the United States, concluded that immigration from southern and eastern Europe posed a serious threat to American culture and society, it nevertheless found that “no satisfactory evidence has yet been produced to show that immigration has resulted in an increase in crime disproportionate to the increase in the adult population” and that the presence of recent immigrants may have even suppressed criminal activity.2 The Wickersham Commission (1929-1931) documented widespread evasion of Prohibition and its negative effect on American society. In the course of its investigations into law enforcement practices, the commission noted a “strong likelihood” that immigrants “can definitely be exonerated from the charge that they are responsible for a disproportionate share of the crimes current in this country.”3