1 gen 1925 anni - 2009 NIH study: Assumptions about immigration and crime in early 20th century

Descrizione:

The theory that immigration is responsible for crime, that the most recent “wave of immigration,” whatever the nationality, is less desirable than the old ones, that all newcomers should be regarded with an attitude of suspicion, is a theory that is almost as old as the colonies planted by Englishmen on the New England coast.

—Edith Abbott in the report of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (1931:23)

Concerns about the criminality of the foreign-born were prominent in the public debate that led the federal government to become involved in regulating immigration in 1882, as they had been in the courts and in state legislatures prior to that time (National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement 1931). In its 1911 report, the Federal Immigration Commission, known as the Dillingham Commission, concluded that federal regulation was not effectively excluding criminal aliens and proposed strengthening restrictions. Revisions to immigration law in 1910 and 1917 expanded the grounds for deportation to include some criminal acts taking place in the United States after lawful immigration. Even after the flow of immigrants had been sharply curtailed by the National Origin Quota Act of 1924, immigrants were still blamed for driving up the crime rate. In the early 1930s, the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, also known as the Wickersham Commission, devoted an entire volume of its final report to the examination of the links between immigration and crime.

The view that immigration increases crime is pervasive and quite persistent, but is there any evidence to support it? Research on immigration and crime today provides no support for this view.1 The Dillingham Commission, despite its policy recommendations, found “no satisfactory evidence” that crime was more prevalent among the foreign-born than among the native population (U.S. Senate 1970b:1). The Wickersham Commission likewise found no evidence supporting a connection between immigration and increased crime. However, these early assessments were challenged by social scientists at the time, who questioned the quality and interpretation of the data, as well as by historians, who have linked trends in violent crime to the arrivals of certain immigrant groups to the United States (Gurr 1989; Lane 1989; Monkkonen 1989; Taft 1933; Van Vechten 1941).

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