Study finds immigrants commit less California crime

No surprise...considering that most crimes are committed by
Republicans.

TMT




Study finds immigrants commit less California crime Tue Feb 26, 2:39
AM ET

Immigrants are far less likely than the average U.S.-born citizen to
commit crime in California, the most populous state in the United
States, according to a report issued late on Monday.

People born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of
California's adult population but account for about 17 percent of the
adult prison population, the report by the Public Policy Institute of
California showed.

According to the report's authors the findings suggest that long-
standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are
unjustified. The report also noted that U.S.-born adult men are
incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of
foreign-born men.

"Our research indicates that limiting immigration, requiring higher
educational levels to obtain visas, or spending more money to increase
penalties against criminal immigrants will have little impact on
public safety," said Kristin Butcher, co-author of the report and
associate professor of economics at Wellesley College.

The study did not differentiate between documented immigrants and
illegal immigrants.

The question of what to do about the millions of undocumented workers
living in the United States has been one of the major issues in the
U.S. presidential election. Mexico, which accounts for a high
proportion of illegal immigrants in California, was deeply
disappointed at the U.S. Congress' failure to pass President George W.
Bush's overhaul of immigration laws last year.

When Butcher and her co-author, Anne Morrison Piehl, associate
professor of economics at Rutgers University, considered all those
committed to institutions including prison, jails, halfway houses and
the like, they found an even greater disparity.

Among men 18 to 40, the population most likely to be in institutions
because of criminal activity, the report found that in California,
U.S.-born men were institutionalized 10 times more often than foreign-
born men (4.2 percent vs. 0.42 percent).

Among other findings in the report, non-citizen men from Mexico 18 to
40 -- a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United
States illegally -- are more than eight times less likely than U.S.-
born men in the same age group to be in a correctional institution
(0.48 percent vs. 4.2 percent).

"From a public safety standpoint, there would be little reason to
further limit immigration, to favor entry by high-skilled immigrants,
or to increase penalties against criminal immigrants," the report
said.

(Reporting by Duncan Martell; Editing by Adam Tanner and Bill Trott)


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