Immigration

Not to be confused with Emigration or Migration.

"Immigrant" redirects here. For other uses, see Immigrant (disambiguation).

Further information: Immigration by country

Net migration rates for 2016: positive (blue), negative (orange), stable (green), and no data (gray)

Template:Legal status Immigration is the international movement of people into a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle or reside there, especially as permanent residents or naturalized citizens, or to take up employment as a migrant worker or temporarily as a foreign worker.

As for economic effects, research suggests that migration is beneficial both to the receiving and sending countries. Research, with few exceptions, finds that immigration on average has positive economic effects on the native population, but is mixed as to whether low-skilled immigration adversely affects low-skilled natives. Studies show that the elimination of barriers to migration would have profound effects on world GDP, with estimates of gains ranging between 67 and 147 percent. Development economists argue that reducing barriers to labor mobility between developing countries and developed countries would be one of the most efficient tools of poverty reduction.

The academic literature provides mixed findings for the relationship between immigration and crime worldwide, but finds for the United States that immigration either has no impact on the crime rate or that it reduces the crime rate. Research shows that country of origin matters for speed and depth of immigrant assimilation, but that there is considerable assimilation overall for both first- and second-generation immigrants.

Research has found extensive evidence of discrimination against foreign born and minority populations in criminal justice, business, the economy, housing, health care, media, and politics in the United States and Europe.

History

Further information: History of human migration

File:Immigration Schild.jpg

Sign Immigration near the border between Mali and Mauritania; sponsored by EU

The term immigration was coined in the 17th century, referring to non-warlike population movements between the emerging nation states.

When people cross national borders during their migration, they are called migrants or immigrants (from Latin: migrare, wanderer) from the perspective of the country which they enter. From the perspective of the country which they leave, they are called emigrant or outmigrant. Sociology designates immigration usually as migration (as well as emigration accordingly outward migration).

Statistics

The global population of immigrants has grown since 1990 but has remained constant at around 3% of the world's population.

As of 2015, the number of international migrants has reached 244 million worldwide, which reflects a 41% increase since 2000. One third of the world's international migrants are living in just 20 countries. The largest number of international migrants live in the United States, with 19% of the world's total. Germany and Russia host 12 million migrants each, taking the second and third place in countries with the most migrants worldwide. Saudi Arabia hosts 10 million migrants, followed by the United Kingdom (9 million) and the United Arab Emirates (8 million).

Between 2000 and 2015, Asia added more international migrants than any other major area in the world, gaining 26 million. Europe added the second largest with about 20 million. In most parts of the world, migration occurs between countries that are located within the same major area.

In 2015, the number of international migrants below the age of 20 reached 37 million, while 177 million are between the ages of 20 and 64. International migrants living in Africa were the youngest, with a median age of 29, followed by Asia (35 years), and Latin America/Caribbean (36 years), while migrants were older in Northern America (42 years), Europe (43 years), and Oceania (44 years).

The number of migrants and migrant workers per country in 2015

Nearly half (43%) of all international migrants originate in Asia, and Europe was the birthplace of the second largest number of migrants (25%), followed by Latin America (15%). India has the largest diaspora in the world (16 million people), followed by Mexico (12 million) and Russia (11 million).

2012 survey

A 2012 survey by Gallup found that given the opportunity, 640 million adults would migrate to another country, with 23% of these would-be immigrant choosing the United States as their desired future residence, while 7% of respondents, representing 45 million people, would choose the United Kingdom. The other top desired destination countries (those where an estimated 69 million or more adults would like to go) were Canada, France, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Germany and Spain.

Understanding of immigration

The largest Vietnamese market in Prague, also known as "Little Hanoi". In 2009, there were about 70,000 Vietnamese in the Czech Republic.

London has become multiethnic as a result of immigration. In London in 2008, Black British and British Asian children outnumbered white British children by about 3 to 2 in government-run schools.

One theory of immigration distinguishes between push and pull factors.

Push factors refer primarily to the motive for immigration from the country of origin. In the case of economic migration (usually labor migration), differentials in wage rates are common. If the value of wages in the new country surpasses the value of wages in one's native country, he or she may choose to migrate, as long as the costs are not too high. Particularly in the 19th century, economic expansion of the US increased immigrant flow, and nearly 15% of the population was foreign born, thus making up a significant amount of the labor force.

As transportation technology improved, travel time, and costs decreased dramatically between the 18th and early 20th century. Travel across the Atlantic used to take up to 5 weeks in the 18th century, but around the time of the 20th century it took a mere 8 days. When the opportunity cost is lower, the immigration rates tend to be higher. Escape from poverty (personal or for relatives staying behind) is a traditional push factor, and the availability of jobs is the related pull factor. Natural disasters can amplify poverty-driven migration flows. Research shows that for middle-income countries, higher temperatures increase emigration rates to urban areas and to other countries. For low-income countries, higher temperatures reduce emigration.

Emigration and immigration are sometimes mandatory in a contract of employment: religious missionaries and employees of transnational corporations, international non-governmental organizations, and the diplomatic service expect, by definition, to work "overseas". They are often referred to as "expatriates", and their conditions of employment are typically equal to or better than those applying in the host country (for similar work).

Non-economic push factors include persecution (religious and otherwise), frequent abuse, bullying, oppression, ethnic cleansing, genocide, risks to civilians during war, and social marginalization. Political motives traditionally motivate refugee flows; for instance, people may emigrate in order to escape a dictatorship.

Some migration is for personal reasons, based on a relationship (e.g. to be with family or a partner), such as in family reunification or transnational marriage (especially in the instance of a gender imbalance). Recent research has found gender, age, and cross-cultural differences in the ownership of the idea to immigrate. In a few cases, an individual may wish to immigrate to a new country in a form of transferred patriotism. Evasion of criminal justice (e.g., avoiding arrest) is a personal motivation. This type of emigration and immigration is not normally legal, if a crime is internationally recognized, although criminals may disguise their identities or find other loopholes to evade detection. For example, there have been reports of war criminals disguising themselves as victims of war or conflict and then pursuing asylum in a different country.

Barriers to immigration come not only in legal form or political form; natural and social barriers to immigration can also be very powerful. Immigrants when leaving their country also leave everything familiar: their family, friends, support network, and culture. They also need to liquidate their assets, and they incur the expense of moving. When they arrive in a new country, this is often with many uncertainties including finding work, where to live, new laws, new cultural norms, language or accent issues, possible racism, and other exclusionary behavior towards them and their family.

The Iron Curtain in Europe was designed as a means of preventing emigration. "It is one of the ironies of post-war European history that, once the freedom to travel for Europeans living under communist regimes, which had long been demanded by the West, was finally granted in 1989/90, travel was very soon afterwards made much more difficult by the West itself, and new barriers were erected to replace the Iron Curtain." —Anita Böcker

The politics of immigration have become increasingly associated with other issues, such as national security and terrorism, especially in western Europe, with the presence of Islam as a new major religion. Those with security concerns cite the 2005 French riots and point to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy as examples of the value conflicts arising from immigration of Muslims in Western Europe. Because of all these associations, immigration has become an emotional political issue in many European nations.

Studies have suggested that some special interest groups lobby for less immigration for their own group and more immigration for other groups since they see effects of immigration, such as increased labor competition, as detrimental when affecting their own group but beneficial when impacting other groups. A 2010 European study suggested that "employers are more likely to be pro-immigration than employees, provided that immigrants are thought to compete with employees who are already in the country. Or else, when immigrants are thought to compete with employers rather than employees, employers are more likely to be anti-immigration than employees." A 2011 study examining the voting of US representatives on migration policy suggests that "representatives from more skilled labor abundant districts are more likely to support an open immigration policy towards the unskilled, whereas the opposite is true for representatives from more unskilled labor abundant districts."

Another contributing factor may be lobbying by earlier immigrants. The Chairman for the US Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform—which lobby for more permissive rules for immigrants, as well as special arrangements just for Irish people—has stated that "the Irish Lobby will push for any special arrangement it can get—'as will every other ethnic group in the country.'"

Immigrants are motivated to leave their former countries of citizenship, or habitual residence, for a variety of reasons, including a lack of local access to resources, a desire for economic prosperity, to find or engage in paid work, to better their standard of living, family reunification, retirement, climate or environmentally induced migration, exile, escape from prejudice, conflict or natural disaster, or simply the wish to change one's quality of life. Commuters, tourists and other short-term stays in a destination country do not fall under the definition of immigration or migration, seasonal labour immigration is sometimes included.

Economic migrant

Further information: Economic migrant

The Indo-Bangladeshi barrier in 2007. India is building a separation barrier along the 4,000 kilometer border with Bangladesh to prevent illegal immigration.

The term economic migrant refers to someone who has travelled from one region to another region for the purposes of seeking employment and an improvement in quality of life and access to resources. An economic migrant is distinct from someone who is a refugee fleeing persecution.

Many countries have immigration and visa restrictions that prohibit a person entering the country for the purposes of gaining work without a valid work visa. As a violation of a State's immigration laws a person who is declared to be an economic migrant can be refused entry into a country.

The World Bank estimates that remittances totaled $420 billion in 2009, of which $317 billion went to developing countries.

Laws and ethics

UNHCR tents at a refugee camp following episodes of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa, 2008

Entry (top) and Exit (above) passport stamps issued to a citizen of Germany by Indian immigration authorities at New Delhi airport.

Treatment of migrants in host countries, both by governments, employers, and original population, is a topic of continual debate and criticism, and the violation of migrant human rights is an ongoing crisis. The United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, has been ratified by 48 states, most of which are heavy exporters of cheap labor. Major migrant-receiving countries and regions – including Western Europe, North America, Pacific Asia, Australia, and the Gulf States – have not ratified the Convention, even though they are host to the majority of international migrant workers. Although freedom of movement is often recognized as a civil right in many documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the freedom only applies to movement within national borders and the ability to return to one's home state.

Some proponents of immigration argue that the freedom of movement both within and between countries is a basic human right, and that the restrictive immigration policies, typical of nation-states, violate this human right of freedom of movement. Such arguments are common among ideologies like anarchism and libertarianism. As philosopher and Open borders activist Jacob Appel has written, "Treating human beings differently, simply because they were born on the opposite side of a national boundary, is hard to justify under any mainstream philosophical, religious or ethical theory."

Where immigration is permitted, it is typically selective. As of 2003, family reunification accounted for approximately two-thirds of legal immigration to the US every year. Ethnic selection, such as the White Australia policy, has generally disappeared, but priority is usually given to the educated, skilled, and wealthy. Less privileged individuals, including the mass of poor people in low-income countries, cannot avail themselves of the legal and protected immigration opportunities offered by wealthy states. This inequality has also been criticized as conflicting with the principle of equal opportunities. The fact that the door is closed for the unskilled, while at the same time many developed countries have a huge demand for unskilled labor, is a major factor in illegal immigration. The contradictory nature of this policy—which specifically disadvantages the unskilled immigrants while exploiting their labor—has also been criticized on ethical grounds.

Immigration policies which selectively grant freedom of movement to targeted individuals are intended to produce a net economic gain for the host country. They can also mean net loss for a poor donor country through the loss of the educated minority—a "brain drain". This can exacerbate the global inequality in standards of living that provided the motivation for the individual to migrate in the first place. One example of competition for skilled labour is active recruitment of health workers from developing countries by developed countries. There may however also be a "brain gain" to emigration, as migration opportunities lead to greater investments in education in developing countries. Overall, research suggests that migration is beneficial both to the receiving and sending countries.

Economic effects

A survey of leading economists shows a consensus behind the view that high-skilled immigration makes the average American better off. A survey of the same economists also shows support behind the notion that low-skilled immigration, while creating winners and losers, makes the average American better off. A survey of European economists shows a consensus that freer movement of people to live and work across borders within Europe makes the average European better off, and strong support behind the notion that it has not made low-skilled Europeans worse off. According to David Card, Christian Dustmann, and Ian Preston, "most existing studies of the economic impacts of immigration suggest these impacts are small, and on average benefit the native population". In a survey of the existing literature, Örn B Bodvarsson and Hendrik Van den Berg write, "a comparison of the evidence from all the studies... makes it clear that, with very few exceptions, there is no strong statistical support for the view held by many members of the public, mainly that immigration has an adverse effect on native-born workers in the destination country."

Overall economic prosperity

Whereas the impact on the average native tends to be small and positive, studies show more mixed results for low-skilled natives, but whether the effects are positive or negative, they tend to be small either way. Immigrants may often do types of work that natives are largely unwilling to do, contributing to greater economic prosperity for the economy as a whole: for instance, Mexican migrant workers taking up manual farm work in the United States has close to zero effect on native employment in that occupation, which means that the effect of Mexican workers on U.S. employment outside farm work was therefore most likely positive, since they raised overall economic productivity. Research indicates that immigrants are more likely to work in risky jobs than U.S.-born workers, partly due to differences in average characteristics, such as immigrants' lower English language ability and educational attainment. According to a 2017 survey of the existing economic literature, studies on high-skilled migrants "rarely find adverse wage and employment consequences, and longer time horizons tend to show greater gains".

Competition from immigrants in a particular profession may aggravate underemployment in that profession, but increase wages for other natives; for instance, a 2017 study in Science found that "the influx of foreign-born computer scientists since the early 1990s... increased the size of the US IT sector... benefited consumers via lower prices and more efficient products... raised overall worker incomes by 0.2 to 0.3% but decreased wages of U.S. computer scientists by 2.6 to 5.1%."

Research also suggests that diversity and immigration have a net positive effect on productivity and economic prosperity. Immigration has also been associated with reductions in offshoring. A study by Harvard economist Nathan Nunn, Yale economist Nancy Qian and LSE economist Sandra Sequeira found that the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1920) contributed to "higher incomes, higher productivity, more innovation, and more industrialization" in the short-run and "higher incomes, less poverty, less unemployment, higher rates of urbanization, and greater educational attainment" in the long-run for the United States. Research also shows that migration to Latin America during the Age of Mass Migration had a positive impact on long-run economic development.

Studies show that the elimination of barriers to migration would have profound effects on world GDP, with estimates of gains ranging between 67–147.3% in the scenarios where billions of workers move from developing to developed countries. Research also finds that migration leads to greater trade in goods and services, and increases in financial flows between the sending and receiving countries. Using 130 years of data on historical migrations to the United States, one study finds "that a doubling of the number of residents with ancestry from a given foreign country relative to the mean increases by 4.2 percentage points the probability that at least one local firm invests in that country, and increases by 31% the number of employees at domestic recipients of FDI from that country. The size of these effects increases with the ethnic diversity of the local population, the geographic distance to the origin country, and the ethno-linguistic fractionalization of the origin country." A 2017 study found that "immigrants' genetic diversity is significantly positively correlated with measures of U.S. counties' economic development [during the Age of Mass Migration]. There exists also a significant positive relationship between immigrants' genetic diversity in 1870 and contemporaneous measures of U.S. counties' average income."

Some research suggests that immigration can offset some of the adverse effects of automation on native labor outcomes. By increasing overall demand, immigrants could push natives out of low-skilled manual labor into better paying occupations. A 2018 study in the American Economic Review found that the Bracero program (which allowed almost half a million Mexican workers to do seasonal farm labor in the United States) did not have any adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of American-born farm workers.

A 2016 paper by University of Southern Denmark and University of Copenhagen economists found that the 1924 immigration restrictions enacted in the United States impaired the economy.

Inequality

Overall immigration has not had much effect on native wage inequality but low-skill immigration has been linked to greater income inequality in the native population. Greater openness to low-skilled immigration in wealthy countries would drastically reduce global income inequality.

Fiscal effects

A 2011 literature review of the economic impacts of immigration found that the net fiscal impact of migrants varies across studies but that the most credible analyses typically find small and positive fiscal effects on average. According to the authors, "the net social impact of an immigrant over his or her lifetime depends substantially and in predictable ways on the immigrant's age at arrival, education, reason for migration, and similar". According to a 2007 literature review by the Congressional Budget Office, "Over the past two decades, most efforts to estimate the fiscal impact of immigration in the United States have concluded that, in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the services they use."

A 2018 study found that inflows of asylum seekers into Western Europe from 1985 to 2015 had a net positive fiscal impact. Research has shown that EU immigrants made a net positive fiscal contribution to Denmark and the United Kingdom. A 2017 study found that when Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants to the United Kingdom gained permission to acquire welfare benefits in 2014 that it had no discernible impact on the immigrants' use of welfare benefits. A paper by a group of French economists found that over the period 1980-2015, "international migration had a positive impact on the economic and fiscal performance of OECD countries."

Impact of refugees

A 2017 survey of leading economists found that 34% of economists agreed with the statement "The influx of refugees into Germany beginning in the summer of 2015 will generate net economic benefits for German citizens over the succeeding decade", whereas 38% were uncertain and 6% disagreed. Studies of refugees' impact on native welfare are scant but the existing literature shows mixed results (negative, positive and no significant effects on native welfare). According to economist Michael Clemens, "when economists have studied past influxes of refugees and migrants they have found the labor market effects, while varied, are very limited, and can in fact be positive." A 2018 study in the Economic Journal found that Vietnamese refugees to the United States had a positive impact on American exports, as exports to Vietnam grew most in US states with larger Vietnamese populations. A 2018 study in the journal Science Advances found that asylum seekers entering Western Europe in the period 1985-2015 had a positive macroeconomic and fiscal impact.

A 2017 paper by Evans and Fitzgerald found that refugees to the United States pay "$21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the U.S." An internal study by the Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration, which was suppressed and not shown to the public, found that refugees to the United States brought in $63 billion more in government revenues than they cost the government. According to University of California, Davis, labor economist Giovanni Peri, the existing literature suggests that there are no economic reasons why the American labor market could not easily absorb 100,000 Syrian refugees in a year. A 2017 paper looking at the long-term impact of refugees on the American labor market over the period 1980–2010 found "that there is no adverse long-run impact of refugees on the U.S. labor market."

Refugees integrate more slowly into host countries' labor markets than labor migrants, in part due to the loss and depreciation of human capital and credentials during the asylum procedure. Refugees tend to do worse in economic terms than natives, even when they have the same skills and language proficiencies of natives. For instance, a 2013 study of Germans in West-Germany who had been displaced from Eastern Europe during and after World War II showed that the forced German migrants did far worse economically than their native West-German counterparts decades later. Second-generation forced German migrants also did worse in economic terms than their native counterparts. A study of refugees to the United States found that "refugees that enter the U.S. before age 14 graduate high school and enter college at the same rate as natives. Refugees that enter as older teenagers have lower attainment with much of the difference attributable to language barriers and because many in this group are not accompanied by a parent to the U.S." Refugees that entered the U.S. at ages 18–45, have "much lower levels of education and poorer language skills than natives and outcomes are initially poor with low employment, high welfare use and low earnings." But the authors of the study find that "outcomes improve considerably as refugees age."

A 2017 study found that the 0.5 million Portuguese who returned to Portugal from Mozambique and Angola in the mid-1970s lowered labor productivity and wages. A 2018 paper found that the areas in Greece that took on a larger share of Greek Orthodox refugees from the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 "have today higher earnings, higher levels of household wealth, greater educational attainment, as well as larger financial and manufacturing sectors."

Impact of undocumented immigrants

Research on the economic effects of undocumented immigrants is scant but existing studies suggests that the effects are positive for the native population, and public coffers. A 2015 study shows that "increasing deportation rates and tightening border control weakens low-skilled labor markets, increasing unemployment of native low-skilled workers. Legalization, instead, decreases the unemployment rate of low-skilled natives and increases income per native." Studies show that legalization of undocumented immigrants would boost the U.S. economy; a 2013 study found that granting legal status to undocumented immigrants would raise their incomes by a quarter (increasing U.S. GDP by approximately $1.4 trillion over a ten-year period), and a 2016 study found that "legalization would increase the economic contribution of the unauthorized population by about 20%, to 3.6% of private-sector GDP." A 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that undocumented immigrants to the United States "generate higher surplus for US firms relative to natives, hence restricting their entry has a depressing effect on job creation and, in turn, on native labor markets."

A 2017 study in the Journal of Public Economics found that more intense immigration enforcement increased the likelihood that US-born children with undocumented immigrant parents would live in poverty.

A paper by Spanish economists found that upon legalizing the undocumented immigrant population in Spain, the fiscal revenues increased by around €4,189 per newly legalized immigrant. The paper found that the wages of the newly legalized immigrants increased after legalization, some low-skilled natives had worse labor market outcomes and high-skilled natives had improved labor market outcomes.

A 2018 study found no evidence that apprehensions of undocumented immigrants in districts in the United States improved the labor market outcomes for American natives.

Impact on the sending countries

Research suggests that migration is beneficial both to the receiving and sending countries. According to one study, welfare increases in both types of countries: "welfare impact of observed levels of migration is substantial, at about 5% to 10% for the main receiving countries and about 10% in countries with large incoming remittances". According to Branko Milanović, country of residency is by far the most important determinant of global income inequality, which suggests that the reduction in labor barriers would significantly reduce global income inequality. A study of equivalent workers in the United States and 42 developing countries found that "median wage gap for a male, unskilled (9 years of schooling), 35 year-old, urban formal sector worker born and educated in a developing country is P$15,400 per year at purchasing power parity". A 2014 survey of the existing literature on emigration finds that a 10 percent emigrant supply shock would increase wages in the sending country by 2–5.5%.

Impact on global poverty

According to economists Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett, "permitting people to move from low-productivity places to high-productivity places appears to be by far the most efficient generalized policy tool, at the margin, for poverty reduction". A successful two-year in situ anti-poverty program, for instance, helps poor people make in a year what is the equivalent of working one day in the developed world. A slight reduction in the barriers to labor mobility between the developing and developed world would do more to reduce poverty in the developing world than any remaining trade liberalization.

Research on a migration lottery allowing Tongans to move to New Zealand found that the lottery winners saw a 263% increase in income from migrating (after only one year in New Zealand) relative to the unsuccessful lottery entrants. A longer-term study on the Tongan lottery winners finds that they "continue to earn almost 300 percent more than non-migrants, have better mental health, live in households with more than 250 percent higher expenditure, own more vehicles, and have more durable assets". A conservative estimate of their lifetime gain to migration is NZ$315,000 in net present value terms (approximately US$237,000).

A 2017 study of Mexican immigrant households in the United States found that by virtue of moving to the United States, the households increase their incomes more than fivefold immediately. The study also found that the "average gains accruing to migrants surpass those of even the most successful current programs of economic development."

A 2017 study of European migrant workers in the UK shows that upon accession to the EU, the migrant workers see a substantial positive impact on their earnings. The data indicate that acquiring EU status raises earnings for the workers by giving them the right to freely change jobs.

A 2017 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that immigrants from middle- and low-income countries to the United States increased their wages by a factor of two to three upon migration.

Innovation and entrepreneurship

A 2017 survey of the existing economic literature found that "high-skilled migrants boost innovation and productivity outcomes." According to a 2013 survey of the existing economic literature, "much of the existing research points towards positive net contributions by immigrant entrepreneurs." Areas where immigrant are more prevalent in the United States have substantially more innovation (as measured by patenting and citations). Immigrants to the United States create businesses at higher rates than natives. A 2010 study showed "that a 1 percentage point increase in immigrant college graduates' population share increases patents per capita by 9–18 percent." Mass migration can also boost innovation and growth, as shown by the Jewish, Huguenot and Bohemian diasporas in Berlin and Prussia, German Jewish Émigrés in the US, the Mariel boatlift, the exodus of Soviet Jews to Israel in the 1990s, European migration to Argentina during the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1914), west-east migration in the wake of German reunification, and Polish immigration to Germany after joining the EU. A 2018 study in the Economic Journal found that "that a 10% increase in immigration from exporters of a given product is associated with a 2% increase in the likelihood that the host country starts exporting that good ‘from scratch’ in the next decade."

Immigrants have been linked to greater invention and innovation in the US. According to one report, "immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America's startup companies valued at $1 billion dollars or more and are key members of management or product development teams in over 70 percent (62 of 87) of these companies." One analysis found that immigrant-owned firms had a higher innovation rate (on most measures of innovation) than firms owned by U.S.-born entrepreneurs. Research also shows that labor migration increases human capital. Foreign doctoral students are a major source of innovation in the American economy. In the United States, immigrant workers hold a disproportionate share of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM): "In 2013, foreign-born workers accounted for 19.2 percent of STEM workers with a bachelor's degree, 40.7 percent of those with a master's degree, and more than half—54.5 percent—of those with a Ph.D."

Quality of institutions

A 2015 study finds "some evidence that larger immigrant population shares (or inflows) yield positive impacts on institutional quality. At a minimum, our results indicate that no negative impact on economic freedom is associated with more immigration." Another study, looking at the increase in Israel's population in the 1990s due to the unrestricted immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union, finds that the mass immigration did not undermine political institutions, and substantially increased the quality of economic institutions. A 2017 study in the British Journal of Political Science argued that the British American colonies without slavery adopted better democratic institutions in order to attract migrant workers to their colonies. A 2018 study fails to find evidence that immigration to the United States weakens economic freedom.

Welfare

Some research has found that as immigration and ethnic heterogeneity increase, government funding of welfare and public support for welfare decrease. Ethnic nepotism may be an explanation for this phenomenon. Other possible explanations include theories regarding in-group and out-group effects and reciprocal altruism.

Research however also challenges the notion that ethnic heterogeneity reduces public goods provision. Studies that find a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and public goods provision often fail to take into account that strong states were better at assimilating minorities, thus decreasing diversity in the long run. Ethnically diverse states today consequently tend to be weaker states. Because most of the evidence on fractionalization comes from sub-Saharan Africa and the United States, the generalizability of the findings is questionable. A 2018 study in the American Political Science Review cast doubts on findings that ethnoracial homogeneity led to greater public goods provision.

Research finds that Americans' attitudes towards immigration influence their attitudes towards welfare spending.

Education

A 2016 study found that immigration in the period 1940–2010 in the United States increased the high school completion of natives: "An increase of one percentage point in the share of immigrants in the population aged 11–64 increases the probability that natives aged 11–17 eventually complete 12 years of schooling by 0.3 percentage point."

Studies have found that non-native speakers of English in the UK have no causal impact on the performance of other pupils, immigrant children have no significant impact on the test scores of Dutch children, no effect on grade repetition among native students exposed to migrant students in Austrian schools, that the presence of Latin American children in schools had no significant negative effects on peers, but that students with limited English skills had slight negative effects on peers, and that the influx of Haitians to Florida public schools after the 2010 Haiti earthquake had no effects on the educational outcomes of incumbent students.

A 2018 study found that the "presence of immigrant students who have been in the country for some time is found to have no effect on natives. However, a small negative effect of recent immigrants on natives’ language scores is reported." Another 2018 study found that the presence of immigrant students to Italy was associated with "small negative average effects on maths test scores that are larger for low ability native students, strongly non-linear and only observable in classes with a high (top 20%) immigrant concentration. These outcomes are driven by classes with a high average linguistic distance between immigrants and natives, with no apparent additional role played by ethnic diversity."

Assimilation

A 2019 review of existing research in the Annual Review of Sociology on immigrant assimilation in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain concluded "we find an overall pattern of intergenerational assimilation in terms of socioeconomic attainment, social relations, and cultural beliefs."

United States

A 2018 study in the American Sociological Review found that within racial groups, most immigrants to the United States had fully assimilated within a span of 20 years. Immigrants arriving in the United States after 1994 assimilate more rapidly than immigrants who arrived in previous periods. Measuring assimilation can be difficult due to "ethnic attrition", which refers to when ancestors of migrants cease to self-identify with the nationality or ethnicity of their ancestors. This means that successful cases of assimilation will be underestimated. Research shows that ethnic attrition is sizable in Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups in the United States. By taking account of ethnic attrition, the assimilation rate of Hispanics in the United States improves significantly. A 2016 paper challenges the view that cultural differences are necessarily an obstacle to long-run economic performance of migrants. It finds that "first generation migrants seem to be less likely to success the more culturally distant they are, but this effect vanishes as time spent in the US increases."

A 2018 study found that Chinese nationals in the United States who received permanent residency permits from the US government amid the Tianamen Square protests (and subsequent Chinese government clampdown) experienced significant employment and earnings gains relative to similar immigrant groups who did not have the same residency rights.

During the Age of Mass Migration, infant arrivals to the United States had greater economic success over their lifetime than teenage arrivals.

Europe

A 2015 report by the National Institute of Demographic Studies finds that an overwhelming majority of second-generation immigrants of all origins in France feel French, despite the persistent discrimination in education, housing and employment that many of the minorities face.

Research shows that country of origin matters for speed and depth of immigrant assimilation but that there is considerable assimilation overall. Research finds that first generation immigrants from countries with less egalitarian gender cultures adopt gender values more similar to natives over time. According to one study, "this acculturation process is almost completed within one generational succession: The gender attitudes of second generation immigrants are difficult to distinguish from the attitudes of members of mainstream society. This holds also for children born to immigrants from very gender traditional cultures and for children born to less well integrated immigrant families." Similar results are found on a study of Turkish migrants to Western Europe. The assimilation on gender attitudes has been observed in education, as one study finds "that the female advantage in education observed among the majority population is usually present among second-generation immigrants."

Share of migrants in all countries. Data from 2015.

A 2017 study of Switzerland found that naturalization strongly improves long-term social integration of immigrants: "The integration returns to naturalization are larger for more marginalized immigrant groups and when naturalization occurs earlier, rather than later in the residency period." A separate study of Switzerland found that naturalization improved the economic integration of immigrants: "winning Swiss citizenship in the referendum increased annual earnings by an average of approximately 5,000 U.S. dollars over the subsequent 15 years. This effect is concentrated among more marginalized immigrants."

First-generation immigrants tend to hold less accepting views of homosexual lifestyles but opposition weakens with longer stays. Second-generation immigrants are overall more accepting of homosexual lifestyles, but the acculturation effect is weaker for Muslims and to some extent, Eastern Orthodox migrants.

A study of Bangladeshi migrants in East London found they shifted towards the thinking styles of the wider non-migrant population in just a single generation.

A study on Germany found that foreign-born parents are more likely to integrate if their children are entitled to German citizenship at birth. A 2017 study found that "faster access to citizenship improves the economic situation of immigrant women, especially their labour market attachment with higher employment rates, longer working hours and more stable jobs. Immigrants also invest more in host country-specific skills like language and vocational training. Faster access to citizenship seems a powerful policy instrument to boost economic integration in countries with traditionally restrictive citizenship policies." Naturalization is associated with large and persistent wage gains for the naturalized citizens in most countries. One study of Denmark found that providing immigrants with voting rights reduced their crime rate.

Studies on programs that randomly allocate refugee immigrants across municipalities find that the assignment of neighborhood impacts immigrant crime propensity, education and earnings.

Research suggests that bilingual schooling reduces barriers between speakers from two different communities.

Research suggests that a vicious cycle of bigotry and isolation could reduce assimilation and increase bigotry towards immigrants in the long-term. For instance, University of California, San Diego political scientist Claire Adida, Stanford University political scientist David Laitin and Sorbonne University economist Marie-Anne Valfort argue "fear-based policies that target groups of people according to their religion or region of origin are counter-productive. Our own research, which explains the failed integration of Muslim immigrants in France, suggests that such policies can feed into a vicious cycle that damages national security. French Islamophobia—a response to cultural difference—has encouraged Muslim immigrants to withdraw from French society, which then feeds back into French Islamophobia, thus further exacerbating Muslims’ alienation, and so on. Indeed, the failure of French security in 2015 was likely due to police tactics that intimidated rather than welcomed the children of immigrants—an approach that makes it hard to obtain crucial information from community members about potential threats."

A study which examined Catalan nationalism examined the Catalan Government's policy towards the integration of immigrants during the start of the 1990s. At this time the Spanish region of Catalonia was experiencing a large influx in the number of immigrants from Northern Africa , Latin America and Asia.The Spanish government paid little attention to this influx of immigrants. However, Catalan politicians began discussing how the increase in immigrants would effect Catalan identity. Members of the Catalan parliament petitioned for a plan to integrate these immigrants into Catalan society. Crucially , the plan did not include policies regarding naturalisation , which were key immigration policies of the Spanish government.The plan of the Catalan parliament aimed to create a shared Catalan identity which included both the native Catalan population and immigrant communities. This meant that immigrants were encouraged to relate as part of the Catalan community but also encouraged to retain their own culture and traditions. In this way assimilation of immigrant cultures in Catalonia was avoided.

A 2018 study in the British Journal of Political Science found that immigrants in Norway became more politically engaged the earlier that they were given voting rights.

A 2019 study in the European Economic Review found that language training improved the economic assimilation of immigrants in France.

Social capital

There is some research that suggests that immigration adversely affects social capital in the short term. One study, for instance, found that "larger increases in US states' Mexican population shares correspond to larger decreases in social capital over the period" 1986–2004. A 2017 study in the Journal of Comparative Economics found that "individuals whose ancestors migrated from countries with higher autocracy levels are less likely to trust others and to vote in presidential elections in the U.S. The impact of autocratic culture on trust can last for at least three generations while the impact on voting disappears after one generation. These impacts on trust and voting are also significant across Europe." A 2019 study found that "humans are inclined to react negatively to threats to homogeneity... in the short term. However, these negative outcomes are compensated in the long term by the beneficial influence of intergroup contact, which alleviates initial negative influences."

Health

Research suggests that immigration has positive effects on native workers' health. As immigration rises, native workers are pushed into less demanding jobs, which improves native workers' health outcomes.

A 2018 study found that immigration to the United Kingdom "reduced waiting times for outpatient referrals and did not have significant effects on waiting times in accident and emergency departments (A&E) and elective care." The study also found "evidence that immigration increased waiting times for outpatient referrals in more deprived areas outside of London" but that this increase disappears after 3 to 4 years.

A 2018 systemic review and meta-analysis in The Lancet found that migrants generally have better health than the general population.

Housing

A 2014 study of the United Kingdom found that immigration generally reduced house prices, because natives at the top of the wage distribution respond to immigration by moving to other areas, reducing demand for housing.

Crime

Main article: Immigration and crime

Immigration and crime refers to the relationship between criminal activity and the phenomenon of immigration. The academic literature and official statistics provide mixed findings for the relationship between immigration and crime. Research in the United States tends to suggest that immigration either has no impact on the crime rate or even that immigrants are less prone to crime. A meta-analysis of 51 studies from 1994–2014 on the relationship between immigration and crime in the United States found that, overall, the immigration-crime association is negative, but the relationship is very weak and there is significant variation in findings across studies. This is in line with a 2009 review of high-quality studies conducted in the United States that also found a negative relationship.

Research and statistics in some other, mainly European countries suggest a positive link between immigration and crime: immigrants from particular countries are often overrepresented in crime figures. The over-representation of immigrants in the criminal justice systems of several countries may be due to socioeconomic factors, imprisonment for migration offenses, and racial and ethnic discrimination by police and the judicial system. The relationship between immigration and terrorism is understudied, but existing research is inconclusive. Research on the relationship between refugee migration and crime is scarce and existing empirical evidence is often contradictory. According to statistics from some countries, asylum seekers are overrepresented in crime figures.

Worldwide

Much of the empirical research on the causal relationship between immigration and crime has been limited due to weak instruments for determining causality. The problem with causality primarily revolves around the location of immigrants being endogenous, which means that immigrants tend to disproportionately locate in deprived areas where crime is higher (because they cannot afford to stay in more expensive areas) or because they tend to locate in areas where there is a large population of residents of the same ethnic background. A burgeoning literature relying on strong instruments provides mixed findings.

The relationship between crime and the legal status of immigrants remains understudied, but studies on amnesty programs in the United States and Italy suggest that legal status can largely explain the differences in crime between legal and illegal immigrants, most likely because legal status leads to greater job market opportunities for the immigrants. However, one study finds that the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 led to an increase in crime among previously undocumented immigrants. Existing research suggests that labor market opportunities have a significant impact on immigrant crime rates. Young, male, and poorly-educated immigrants have the highest individual probabilities of imprisonment among immigrants. Research suggests that the allocation of refugee immigrants to high crime neighborhoods increases individual crime propensity later in life due to social interaction with criminals.

Some factors may effect the reliability of data on suspect rates, crime rates, conviction rates and prison populations for drawing conclusions about immigrants' overall involvement in criminal activity:

• Police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by immigrants or in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of immigrants among crime suspects.
• Possible discrimination by the judicial system may result in higher number of convictions.
• Unfavorable bail and sentencing decisions due to foreigners' ease of flight, lack of domiciles, lack of regular employment and lack of family able to host the individual can explain immigrants' higher incarceration rates when compared to their share of convictions relative to the native population.
• Non-immigrants may be more likely to report crimes when they believe the offender has an immigrant background.
• Imprisonment for migration offenses, which are more common among immigrants without a residence permit in their host country, need to be taken account of for meaningful comparisons between overall immigrant and native criminal involvement.
• Foreigners imprisoned for drug offenses may not actually live in the country where they are serving sentences but were arrested while in transit.
• Crimes by short-term migrants, such as tourists, exchange students and transient workers, are in some cases counted as crimes by immigrants or foreigners, and gives the impression that a higher share of the migrant population commits crimes (as these short-term migrants are not counted among the foreign-born population).

Terrorism

The relationship between immigration and terrorism remains understudied and the scarce evidence is inconclusive. A 2016 study finds that migrants from terror-prone states increase the risk of terrorism in the host country, but when immigration is not necessarily linked to terrorism in the migrants' countries of origin, immigration is associated with a lower level of terrorism in the host country. The authors note that "only a minority of migrants from high-terrorism states can be associated with increases in terrorism, and not necessarily in a direct way." In 2018, Washington and Lee University law professor Nora V. Demleitner wrote that there is "mixed evidence" as to a relationship between immigration and terrorism. A paper by a group of German political scientists and economists, covering 1980–2010, found that there were more terrorist attacks in countries with a larger number of foreigners, but that, on average, the foreigners were not more likely to become terrorists than the natives. The study also found little evidence that terrorism is systematically imported from predominantly Muslim countries, the exceptions being Algeria and Iran. High-skilled migrants are associated with a significantly lower risk of terror compared to low-skilled ones, while there is no significant difference between male and female migrants.The study found that diminished acceptance by the host country of the migrants increased the terror risk. Research focusing on the security impact of the European migrant crisis found little to no relationship between increasing migration flows and acts of terrorism.

According to Olivier Roy in 2017 analyzing the previous two decades of terrorism in France, the typical jihadist is a second-generation immigrant or convert who after a period of petty crime was radicalized in prison. Georgetown University terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that repression of minority groups, such as Muslims, makes it easier for terrorist organizations to recruit from those minority groups. While French scholar Olivier Roy has argued that the burkini bans and secularist policies of France provoked religious violence in France, French scholar Gilles Kepel responded that Britain has no such policies and still suffered several jihadist attacks in 2017.

Asia

Japan

Further information: Demographics of Japan and Crime in Japan

A survey of existing research on immigration and crime in Japan found that "prosecution and sentencing in Japan do seem to result in some disparities by nationality, but the available data are too limited to arrive at confident conclusions about their nature or magnitude".

According to a 1997 news report, a large portion of crimes by immigrants are by Chinese in Japan, and some highly publicized crimes by organized groups of Chinese (often with help of Japanese organized crime) have led to a negative public perception of immigrants. According to the National Police Agency in 2015, Vietnamese nationals overtook Chinese as having the highest number of criminal offenses for foreigners. The number of offenses has reportedly been on the rise as of 2021, and has been linked to the lower economic status of Vietnamese in Japan.

Malaysia

A 2017 study found that immigration to Malaysia decreases property crime rates and violent crime rates. In the case of property crime rates, this is in part because immigrants improve economic conditions for natives.

Europe

Further information: Immigration to Europe and List of countries by immigrant population

A 2015 study found that the increase in immigration flows into western European countries that took place in the 2000s did "not affect crime victimization, but it is associated with an increase in the fear of crime, the latter being consistently and positively correlated with the natives' unfavourable attitude toward immigrants." In a survey of the existing economic literature on immigration and crime, one economist describes the existing literature in 2014 as showing that "the results for Europe are mixed for property crime but no association is found for violent crime".

Denmark

Further information: Immigration to Denmark and Crime in Denmark

Immigrants (blue) and descendants of immigrants (red). Countries are listed in order according to "blue" values. Example: Index 125 means a man from country X was 25% to be convicted of a crime. Yugoslavia means male immigrants born in that country before it was split up. Source Statistics Denmark

Immigrants who have committed crimes may be denied Danish citizenship. For instance, immigrants who have received a prison sentence of one year or more, or at least three months for crimes against a person cannot receive citizenship. Convictions which have resulted in a fine also carries with it a time period for immigrants, where citizenship applications are rejected up to 4.5 years after the fine. Upon several offences, the period is extended by 3 years. A report by Statistics Denmark released in December 2015 found that 83% of crimes are committed by individuals of Danish origin (88% of the total population), 14% by individuals of non-Western descent and 3% by those of non-Danish Western descent. An index standardized for age shows that crime rates are 48% higher among male immigrants and 140% higher among male descendants of immigrants.

Male Lebanese immigrants and their descendants, a big part of them being of Palestinian descent, have, at 257, the highest crime-index among the studied groups, which translates to crime rates 150% higher than the country's average. The index is standardized by both age and socioeconomic status. Men of Yugoslav origin and men originating in Turkey, Pakistan, Somalia and Morocco are associated with high crime-indexes, ranging between 187 and 205, which translate to crime rates about double the country's average. The lowest crime index (32) is recorded among immigrants and descendants originating from the and is far below the average for all men in Denmark. A low index at 38 was recorded for immigrants from China.

A 2014 study of the random dispersal of refugee immigrants over the period 1986–1998, and focusing on the immigrant children who underwent this random assignment before the age of 15, suggests that exposure to neighbourhood crime increases individual crime propensity. The share of convicted criminals living in the assignment neighborhood at assignment affects later crime convictions of males, but not of females, who were assigned to these neighborhoods as children. The authors "find that a one standard deviation increase in the share of youth criminals living in the assignment neighborhood, and who committed a crime in the assignment year, increases the probability of a conviction for male assignees by between 5 percent and 9 percent later in life (when they are between 15 and 21 years old)."

One study of Denmark found that providing immigrants with voting rights reduced their crime rate.

At 4%, male migrants aged 15–64 with non-Western backgrounds had twice the conviction rate against the Danish Penal Code in 2018, compared to 2% for Danish men. In a given year, about 13% of all male descendants of non-Western migrants aged 17–24 are convicted against the penal code.

In November 2018, the government announced plans to house failed asylum claimants, criminal foreigners who could not be deported and foreign fighters in the Islamic State on Lindholm (Stege Bugt), an island no permanent residents. The scheme was approved by Danish parliament 19 December 2018. The plan was opposed by council leaders in Vordingsborg municipality and merchants in Kalvehave, where the ferry to Lindholm has its port.

A 2019 study reviewing ten studies on the relationship between immigration and crime in Denmark found that different studies came to different conclusions as to whether immigrants were overrepresented, depending on what kind of data was used.

In the 2018-2020 period, 83 people were denied Danish citizenship because they had committed serious crime. Among those were people who had received court sentences for gang crime, violence against children and sexual offenses. People who have received a prison sentence of at least one year are barred from receiving citizenship, along with people who have received a prison sentence of at least three months for a crime against a person.

In late 2020, the minister for Immigration and Integration, Mattias Tesfaye, announced that the category "Non-Western immigrant" in Danish statistics on immigrants was to be changed where immigrants with higher rates of crime and unemployment were to be placed into the MENAPT category encompassing immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. This was due to the "Non-Western" category encompassed major differences as integration of immigrants from Thailand, the Philippines and Latin America was markedly different from those of the Middle East. Of the about 500 thousand immigrants and second-generation immigrants in Denmark, 54.5 percent came from MENAPT countries. Statistics showed that young males from MENAPT countries had markedly higher crime rates than the corresponding group from other non-Western countries, where 4.6% had been sentenced for crimes while from other non-Western countries the rate was 1.8%.

In April 2021, the Mette Frederiksen Cabinet approved regulation which stops awarding citizenship to foreigners who had received a prison sentence in court which also encompassed suspended prison sentences. Previously, awarding citizenship was possible for foreigners with a prison sentence of less than a year.

Prison population

In 2017, 30% of the prison population were foreign nationals with the largest group being Romanian citizens, followed by Turkish. and Lithuanian citizens. On 1 July 2017, there were 3403 inmates and 2382 of those were Danish citizens.

Finland

Further information: Immigration to Finland and Crime in Finland

Immigrant crime in Finland became a topic of public debate in the 1990s-early 21st century period with the arrivals of Somalis in Finland.

Offences against the Criminal Code by nationality in 2017-2018
Origin				Per 1000 citizens
Sweden			80.75
Iraq			70.07
Somalia			66.56
Estonia			56.97
Romania			48.79
Russia			42.14
Foreign countries' average			41.83
Finland			35.71
Source: Statistics Finland.

A 2015 study found that immigrant youth had higher incidence rates in 14 out of 17 delinquent acts. The gap is small for thefts and vandalism, and no significant differences for shoplifting, bullying and use of intoxicants. According to the authors, "weak parental social control and risk routines, such as staying out late, appear to partly explain the immigrant youths' higher delinquency", and "the relevance of socioeconomic factors was modest".

According to the American Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Estonians and Romanians were the two largest group of foreigners in Finnish prisons.

According to 2014 official statistics, 24% of rapes are estimated to have been committed by individuals with foreign surnames in Finland. For some context, foreign-language speakers and the foreign-born comprised roughly 6% of the Finnish population in 2014, meaning that the percentage of individuals with foreign surnames in Finland is at very least 6%. There are great differences in representation between nationalities of rapists: while in 1998 there were no rapists hailing from Vietnam or China, there were many from other countries; 10 times more "foreign-looking" men were accused of rape than the overall percentage of foreigners in Finland.

France

Further information: Immigration to France and Crime in France

A 2006 study found "that the share of immigrants in the population has no significant impact on crime rates once immigrants' economic circumstances are controlled for, while finding that unemployed immigrants tend to commit more crimes than unemployed non-immigrants." As shown in the 2006 study with 1999 French census data calculations, an unemployed nonimmigrant outlier raises the number of crimes by 0.297, and another raises it by 0.546.

Aoki and Yasuyuki's research show that data that is frequently shown regarding French immigration and crime is misleading, as it does not take discrimination and economic hardships into account as a motivator for criminal acts. As shown in the 2006 study, after adding the share of unemployed immigrants in the labor force, it is determined that the effect of the share of immigrants now becomes insignificant.

With the exception of 2015 in Macrotrends collection of data, French crime rates overall have been on the steady decline, experiencing a 5.68% decline from 2017-2018. However, immigration rates are on the incline, with a 10.74% increase of migrants granted asylum from 2017-2018. This data from 1990-2022 indicates that crime rates and migration rates do not correlate if one is only looking at the numbers, with no other qualitative factors in place.

A study by sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, director of studies at the EHESS, found that "Muslims, mostly from North African origin, are becoming the most numerous group in [French prisons]." His work has been criticized for taking into account only 160 prisoners in 4 prisons, all close to northern Paris where most immigrants live.

Germany

Main article: Immigration and crime in Germany

Published in 2017, the first comprehensive study of the social effects of the one million refugees going to Germany found that it caused "very small increases in crime in particular with respect to drug offenses and fare-dodging." A 2021 study found that asylum seekers and recognized refugees had no impact on violent crime in Germany. A 2019 study by Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg economists found that the arrival of nearly one million refugees in 2015 did not increase the likelihood that Germans would be the victims of crime. A January 2018 Zurich University of Applied Sciences study commissioned by the German government attributed over 90% of a 10% overall rise in violent crime from to 2015 to 2016 in Lower Saxony to refugees. The study's authors noted that there were great differences between different refugee groups. Refugees from North African countries Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco constituted 0.9% of refugees but represented 17.1% of violent crime refugee suspects and 31% of robbery refugee suspects. The latter corresponds to a 35-fold over-representation. Refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq represented 54.7% of the total, but represented 16% of refugee robbery suspects and 34.9% violent crime suspects and were thus underrepresented.

A report released by the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation in November 2015 found that over the period January–September 2015, the crime rate of refugees was the same as that of native Germans. According to Deutsche Welle, the report "concluded that the majority of crimes committed by refugees (67 percent) consisted of theft, robbery and fraud. Sex crimes made for less than 1 percent of all crimes committed by refugees, while homicide registered the smallest fraction at 0.1 percent." According to the conservative newspaper Die Welt's description of the report, the most common crime committed by refugees was not paying fares on public transportation. According to Deutsche Welle's reporting in February 2016 of a report by the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, the number of crimes committed by refugees did not rise in proportion to the number of refugees between 2014 and 2015. According to Deutsche Welle, "between 2014 and 2015, the number of crimes committed by refugees increased by 79 percent. Over the same period the number of refugees in Germany increased by 440 percent."

The U.S. fact-checker Politifact noted that Germany's crime data suggests that the crime rate of the average refugee is lower than that of the average German. In April 2017, the crime figures released for 2016 showed that the number of suspected crimes by refugees, asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants increased by 50 percent. The figures showed that most of the suspected crimes were by repeat offenders, and that 1 percent of migrants accounted for 40 percent of total migrant crimes.

A 2017 study in the European Economic Review found that the German government's policy of immigration of more than 3 million people of German descent to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a significant increase in crime. The effects were strongest in regions with high unemployment, high preexisting crime levels or large shares of foreigners.

According to a 2017 study in the European Journal of Criminology, the crime rate was higher among immigrant youths than native youths during the 1990s and 2000s but most of the difference could be explained by socioeconomic factors. The different crime rates narrowed in the last ten years; the study speculates that "a new citizenship law finally granting German-born descendants of guest workers German citizenship, as well as increased integration efforts (particularly in schools) and a stronger disapproval of violence" may have contributed to this narrowing.

In 2018, the interior ministry's report "Criminality in context with immigration" (German: Kriminalität im Kontext von Zuwanderung) for the first time summarized and singled out all people who entered Germany via the asylum system. The group called "immigrants" includes all asylum seekers, tolerated people, "unauthorized residents" and all those entitled to protection (subsidiary protected, contingent refugees and refugees under the Geneva Convention and asylum). The group represented roughly 2 percent of the German population by end of 2017, but was suspected of committing 8.5 percent of crimes (violations off the German alien law are not included). The numbers suggest that the differences could at least to some extent have to do with the fact that the refugees are younger and more often male than the average German. The statistics show that the asylum-group is highly overrepresented for some types of crime. They account for 14.3 percent of all suspects in crimes against life (which include murder, manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter), 12.2 percent of sexual offences, 11.4 percent of thefts and 9.7 percent of body injuries. The report also shows differences between the origin of migrants. Syrians are underrepresented as suspects, whereas citizens from most African countries, especially northern Africans are strongly overrepresented. Migrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan are particularly overerrepresented as suspects in sexual offenses.

In February 2019, all states of Germany reported an increase in the share of foreign and stateless inmates in the Prisons in Germany in the preceding 3-5 year period. In Bremen and Hamburg half the inmates were foreigners and a third in North Rhine-Westphalia.

In 2018, the Wall Street Journal analysed German crime statistics for crime suspects and found that the foreigners, overall 12.8% of the population, make up a disproportionate share of crime suspects (34.7%), see horizontal bar chart.

Share of foreign nationals among 2017 crime suspects
Pickpocketing			74.4%
Forgery of official documents			55.4%
Burglaries			41.3%
Rapes and sexual assaults			37%
All types			34.7%
Social benefit fraud			34.1%
Murder and manslaughter			29.7%
Share of population			12.8%
Source: Wall Street Journal

Number of suspects in organized crime in Germany

In 2017, as in previous years German citizens constituted the largest group of suspects in organised crime trials. The fraction of non-German citizen suspects increased from 67.5% to 70.7% while the fraction of German citizens decreased correspondingly. For the German citizens, 14.9% had a different citizenship at birth.

Fraction of sexual offense cases with at least one immigrant suspect

According to statistics collected by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the number of immigrants suspects of sexual offenses in Germany has gone up in absolute numbers, while simultaneously the number of German perpetrators has gone down.

At least one immigrant was identified as a suspect in 3404 sexual offense cases in 2016, which were twice as many as the previous year.

From 2016 to 2017, the number of crimes committed by foreigners in Germany decreased from 950000 to 700000, a 23% reduction. According to Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, the reduction was largely due to fewer illegal immigrants arriving or remaining in the country.

DW reported in 2006 that in Berlin, young male immigrants are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than their German peers. Hans-Jörg Albrecht, director of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal law in Freiburg, stated that the "one over-riding factor in youth crime [was] peer group pressure." Whereas the Gastarbeiter in the 50s and 60s did not have an elevated crime rate, second- and third-generation of immigrants had significantly higher crime rates.

Greece

Further information: Immigration to Greece and Crime in Greece

Illegal immigration to Greece has increased rapidly over the past several years. Tough immigration policies in Spain and Italy and agreements with their neighboring African countries to combat illegal immigration have changed the direction of African immigration flows toward Greece. At the same time, flows from Asia and the Middle East—mainly Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bangladesh—to Greece appear to have increased as well. By 2012 it was estimated that more than 1 million illegal immigrants entered Greece. The evidence now indicates that nearly all illegal immigration to the European Union flows through the country's porous borders. In 2010, 90 percent of all apprehensions for unauthorized entry into the European Union took place in Greece, compared to 75 percent in 2009 and 50 percent in 2008.

In 2010, 132,524 persons were arrested for "illegal entry or stay" in Greece, a sharp increase from 95,239 in 2006. Nearly half of those arrested (52,469) were immediately deported, the majority of them being Albanians. Official statistics show that immigrants are responsible for about half of the criminal activity in Greece.

Ireland

Foreigners are under-represented in the Irish prison population, according to 2010 figures.

Italy

Further information: Immigration to Italy and Crime in Italy

According to the ISPI, the Italian prison population in 2018 counted 59655 and of those 34% were foreigners, with the largest groups coming from Morocco (3751), Albania (2568), Romania (2561), Tunisia (2070) and Nigeria (1453). A study of immigration to Italy during the period 1990–2003 found that the size of immigrant population is positively correlated with the incidence of most types of crime, as well as with the overall number of criminal offenses. However, the causal effect seems limited to some categories of crime: murders, robberies and, to a lesser extent, thefts. Over the period 2007–2016, the crime rate among non-Italians decreased by around 65%.

A study of Italy before and after the January 2007 European Union enlargement found that giving legal status to the previously illegal immigrants from the new EU members states led to a "50 percent reduction in recidivism". The authors find that "legal status... explains one-half to two-thirds of the observed differences in crime rates between legal and illegal immigrants". A study on the 2007 so-called "click day" amnesty for undocumented immigrants in Italy found that the amnesty reduced the immigrant crime rate. The authors estimate "that a ten percent increase in the share of immigrants legalized in one region would imply a 0.3 percent reduction in immigrants' criminal charges in the following year in that same region". Research shows that stricter enforcement of migration policy leads to a reduction in the crime rate of undocumented migrants.

According to the latest report by Idos/Unar, immigrants made up 32,6% of prison population in 2015 (four percentage points less than five years before), immigrants making up 8,2% of population in 2015. Prison population data may not give a reliable picture of immigrants' involvement in criminal activity due to different bail and sentencing decisions for foreigners. Foreigners are, for instance, far more overrepresented in the prison population than their share of convictions relative to the native population. According to a 2013 study, the majority of foreign prisoners are held in connection with a drug offence. One out of every nine offences ascribed to foreign prisoners concerns violation of 'laws governing foreigners'. The 2013 study cites literature that points to discriminatory practices against foreigners by Italian law enforcement, judiciary and penal system.

According to a 2013 report, "undocumented immigrants are responsible for the vast majority of crimes committed in Italy by immigrants... the share of undocumented immigrants varies between 60 and 70 percent for violent crimes, and it increases to 70–85 for property crime. In 2009, the highest shares are in burglary (85), car theft (78), theft (76), robbery (75), assaulting public officer / resisting arrest (75), handling stolen goods (73)."

The 2013 report notes that "immigrants accounted for almost 23 percent of the criminal charges although they represented only 6‐7 percent of the resident population" in 2010.

According to 2007 data, the crime rate of legal immigrants was 1.2–1.4% whereas the crime rate was 0.8% for native Italians. The overrepresentation is partly due to the large number of young legal immigrants, the crime rate is 1.9% for legal immigrants aged 18–44 whereas it is 1.5% for their Italian peers; 0.4% for legal immigrants aged 45–64 years whereas it is 0.7% for their Italian peers; and for those over 65 years old, the crime rates is the same among natives and foreigners. 16.9% of crimes committed by legal immigrants aged 18–44 are linked to violations of immigration laws. By excluding those crimes, the crime rate of legal immigrants aged 18–44 is largely the same as that of same aged Italians.

Netherlands

Further information: Immigration to the Netherlands

"Allochtoon" Dutch youths, especially young Antillean and Surinamese Rotterdammers, are more often suspected of crime by the police than other youths. More than half of Moroccan-Dutch male youths aged 18 to 24 years in Rotterdam have ever been suspected of crimes by the police, while among Netherlands-born youth aged from 18 to 24, 18% have been in contact with the judiciary.

According to a 2009 report commissioned by Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, 63% of the 447 teenagers convicted of serious crime are children of parents born outside the Netherlands. All these cases concern crime for which the maximum jail sentence is longer than eight years, such as robbery with violence, extortion, arson, public acts of violence, sexual assault, manslaughter and murder. The ethnic composition of the perpetrators was: native Dutch – 37%; Moroccans – 14%; Unknown origin – 14%; "other non-Westerners" – 9%; Turkish – 8%; Surinamese – 7%; Antillean – 7%; and "other Westerners" – 4%. In the majority of cases, the judges did not consider the serious offences to be grave enough to necessitate an unconditional jail sentence.

Analysis of police data for 2002 by ethnicity showed that 37.5 percent of all crime suspects living in the Netherlands were of foreign origin (including those of the second generation), almost twice as high as the share of immigrants in the Dutch population. The highest rates per capita were found among first and second generation male migrants of a non‐Western background. Of native male youths between the ages of 18 and 24, in 2002 2.2% were arrested, of all immigrant males of the same age 4.4%, of second generation non-Western males 6.4%. The crime rates for so‐called 'Western migrants' were very close to those of the native Dutch. In all groups, the rates for women were considerably lower than for men, lower than one percent, with the highest found among second generation non‐western migrants, 0.9% (Blom et al. 2005: 31).

For Moroccan immigrants, whether they originate from the underdeveloped parts of Morocco has a modest impact on their crime rate. One study finds that "crime rates in the Netherlands are higher among Moroccans who come from the countryside and the Rif, or whose parents do, than among those who come from the urban provinces in Morocco and from outside the Rif, or whose parents do." In 2015, individuals with a Moroccan background were, not taking their age into account, almost six times as likely to be suspected for a crime compared to the native Dutch. Of the first generation 2.52% was suspected of a crime, of the second generation 7.36%, of males 7.78% and women 1.34%.

Using 2015 data, Statistics Netherlands concluded that non-Western male immigrant youths had been relatively often suspected of a crime: 5.42% in the group aged between 18 and 24, compared with 1.92% for native Dutch of the same age. For both male and female non-Western immigrants of all ages combined the numbers were 2.4% for the first generation and 4.54% for the second. The absolute crime rate had dropped by almost a half since the early twenty-first century, for both native Dutch and non-western immigrants. In 2017, a study concluded that asylum seekers in the Netherlands were less criminal than native Dutch with the same combination of age, gender and socio-economic position.

Norway

This section is an excerpt from Immigration to Norway § Crime.[edit]

Bar chart showing number of perpetrators aged 15 and older per 1000 residents per foreign-born population for the years 2010–2013, according to Statistics Norway.

According to an analysis of 1998–2002 crime statistics, non-Western immigrants were overrepresented for violent crime, economic crime and traffic violations.

According to a 2017 study by Statistics Norway, crime rates of immigrants varied with the reason for immigration. Three groups were overrepresented: refugees had the highest crime rate at 108.8 per 1000 population, family reunification immigrants were overrepresented at 66.9 per 1000 and labour migrants were overrepresented at 61.8 per 1000 population. Foreign residents who arrived to study were strongly underrepresented with 19.7 perpetrators per 1000.

The overall probability that a person living in Norway would be convicted for a felony (Norwegian: forbrytelse) was increased by about 0.5 percentage points for the immigrant compared to non-immigrant populations for felonies committed in the years 2001–2004. The incidence was especially high among immigrants from Kosovo, Morocco, Somalia, Iraq, Iran (Incl. Kurdistan province) and Chile, and reached more than 2% in all these groups. In comparison, the incidence in the non-immigrant population was about 0.7%. Incidence was lower than for the non-immigrant population among immigrants from among others, Western European countries, Eastern Europe except Poland, the Balkans and Russia, the Philippines, China and North America. Incidence was also higher for persons with two immigrant parents for all countries of origin, including Nordic and Western European countries. When the data was corrected for the population group's age and gender structure (the most over-represented immigrant groups also have a considerable over-representation of young men), place of residence (rural–central) and employment situation, the over-representation was found to be significantly lower, especially for those groups which had the highest incidence in the uncorrected statistics. For some groups, among them immigrants from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Poland, Russia and the other Eastern European countries, the corrected incidences did not differ significantly from the non-immigrant population.

According to data released by the European Council, 341 out of the year 2000 prison inmate population of 2643 were foreign nationals, a share of 12.9%. In the year 2010 foreign nationals represented 1129 out of a 3636 total, a 31.1% share. These figures were corroborated by officials of the Norwegian Correctional Service which stated the rising trend escalated when 8 countries joined the Schengen Area in 2007. In order to decrease costs for interpreters and other special needs of foreign inmates, foreign nationals serving sentences involving subsequent deportation were in 2012 incarcerated in an institution holding only foreigners as they are not intended to be re-integrated into Norwegian society. This institution opened in December 2012 in Kongsvinger.

In September 2016 Norwegian authorities discovered that more than a million identity papers had been issued without stringent checks which enabled fraudsters to claim social welfare benefits of many persons simultaneously.

Rape suspects by place of birth in 2017

In 2017, a Statistics Norway (SSB) report on crime in Norway was ordered by the immigration minister Sylvi Listhaug. SSB limited the scope of the paper to figures for individual nations from which at least 4,000 immigrants lived in Norway as of 1 January 2010. In the 2010–2013 period, the proportion of foreign-born perpetrators of criminal offences aged 15 and older per 1000 residents in Norway was found to be highest among immigrants from South and Central America (164.0), Africa (153.8), and Asia including Turkey (117.4), and lowest among immigrants from Eastern Europe (98.4), other Nordic countries (69.1), and Western Europe outside the Nordic region (50.7). This was compared to averages of 44.9 among native Norwegians and 112.9 among Norway-born residents with parents of foreign origin. Among individual countries of origin for which figures were provided, the estimated proportion of foreign-born perpetrators was highest among immigrants from Kosovo (131.48), Afghanistan (127.62), Iraq (125.29), Somalia (123.81), and Iran (108.60). Immigrants from Poland were the only over-represented population for which gender and age structure, employment and place of residence, could explain their over-representation. The total number of perpetrators in the 2010–2013 period with Norwegian background was 154326 and 27985 with immigration background.

Total persons sanctioned in Norway by principal type of offence, citizenship and year, 2011–2015 (click image to view).

According to Statistics Norway, as of 2015, a total of 260,868 persons residing in Norway incurred sanctions. Of these, most were citizens of countries in Europe (240,497 individuals), followed by Asia (2,899 individuals), Africa (2,469 individuals), the Americas (909 individuals), and Oceania (92 individuals). There were also 13,853 persons sanctioned who had unknown citizenship, and 149 persons sanctioned without citizenship. The five most common countries of origin of foreign citizens in Norway who incurred sanctions were Poland (7,952 individuals), Lithuania (4,227 individuals), Sweden (3,490 individuals), Romania (1,953 individuals) and Denmark (1,728 individuals).

In 2007 was the first time when foreign perpetrators of partner murders were in the majority. While 13% of Norway's population are foreigners, they represent 47% of perpetrators who have murdered their partner. The most prevalent countries of origin were: Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Eritrea.

In 2018, an investigation into court cases involving domestic violence against children showed that 47% of the cases involved parents who were both born abroad. According to a researcher at Norwegian Police University College the over-representation was due to cultural (honor culture) and legal differences in Norway and foreign countries.

Spain

Further information: Immigration to Spain and Crime in Spain

A 2008 study finds that the rates of crimes committed by immigrants are substantially higher than nationals. The study finds that "the arrival of immigrants has resulted in a lack of progress in the reduction of offences against property and in a minor increase in the number of offences against Collective Security (i.e. drugs and trafficking). In the case of nationals, their contribution to the increase in the crime rate is primarily concentrated in offences against persons." By controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors, the gap between immigrants and natives is reduced but not fully. The authors also find "that a higher proportions of American, non-UE European, and African immigrants tend to widen the crime differential, the effect being larger for the latter ones". The same paper provides supports for the notion that labour market conditions impact the relationship between crime and immigration. Cultural differences were also statistically detected. This study has been criticized for not using strong instruments for identifying causality: the "instruments (lagged values of the covariates and measures of the service share of GDP in a province) are not convincing in dealing with the endogeneity of migrant location choice."

Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) published a study that analyzes records in the Register of Convicted in 2008. The data show that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics: 70% of all crimes were committed by Spaniards and 30% by foreigners. Foreigners make up 15% of the population.

Switzerland

Further information: Immigration to Switzerland and Crime in Switzerland § Immigrant criminality

In Switzerland, 69.7% of the prison population did not have Swiss citizenship, compared to 22.1% of total resident population (as of 2008). The figure of arrests by residence status is not usually made public. In 1997, when there were for the first time more foreigners than Swiss among the convicts under criminal law (out of a fraction of 20.6% of the total population at the time), a special report was compiled by the Federal Department of Justice and Police (published in 2001) which for the year 1998 found an arrest rate per 1000 adult population of 2.3 for Swiss citizens, 4.2 for legally resident aliens and 32 for asylum seekers. 21% of arrests made concerned individuals with no residence status, who were thus either sans papiers or "crime tourists" without any permanent residence in Switzerland.

A 2019 study found that asylum seekers exposed to civil conflict and mass killing during childhood were 35% more prone to violent crimes than co-national asylum seekers who were not exposed to conflict. The conflict exposed cohorts have a higher propensity to target victims from their own nationality. Offering labor market access to the asylum seekers eliminates two-thirds of effect of conflict exposure on crime propensity.

In 2010, a statistic was published which listed delinquency by nationality (based on 2009 data). To avoid distortions due to demographic structure, only the male population aged between 18 and 34 was considered for each group. From the study, it became clear that crime rate is highly correlated on the country of origin of the various migrant groups. Thus, immigrants from Germany, France and Austria had a significantly lower crime rate than Swiss citizens (60% to 80%), while immigrants from Angola, Nigeria and Algeria had a crime rate of above 600% of that of Swiss population. In between these extremes were immigrants from Former Yugoslavia, with crime rates of between 210% and 300% of the Swiss value.

Sweden

Further information: Immigration to Sweden and Crime in Sweden

Data source: Swedish National Council of Crime Prevention (Swedish: Brottsförebyggande Rådet or BRÅ)

Those with immigrant background are over-represented in Swedish crime statistics. Research shows that socioeconomic factors, such as unemployment, poverty, exclusion language, and other skills explain most of difference in crime rates between immigrants and natives.

According to the vice National Police Commissioner of the Swedish Police Authority, intelligence gathered by police showed that there are about 40 ethnic crime clans in Sweden who came to the country in order to pursue organized crime. They are primarily settled in Stockholm, Södertälje, Gothenburg, Malmö, Landskrona and Jönköping. In these clans, the extended family raises the children to take over the organized crime activities and they have no ambitions to become integrated into Swedish mainstream society. Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven had long denied that crime gangs had anything to do with immigration, but in September 2020 changed his stance in an SVT interview, where he said that a large immigration led to difficulties with integration which in turn increased risk of crime.

About one third of new prison inmates in the 2011-2019 did not have Swedish citizenship, where there was an increase in the share from 29% in 2011 to 33% in 2019.

A 2014 survey of several studies found that people with foreign background are, on average, two times more likely to commit crimes than those born in Sweden. This figure has remained stable since the 1970s, despite the changes in numbers of immigrants and their country of origin. Some studies reporting a link on immigration and crime have been criticized for not taking into account the population's age, employment and education level, all of which affect level of crime. In general, research that takes these factors into account does not support the idea that there is a link between immigration and crime.

Recent immigration to Sweden

Crime and immigration was one of the major themes of the 2018 Swedish general election.

2013-2018 birthplace of rapists convicted in Sweden, total 843

In 2018, Swedish Television investigative journalism show Uppdrag Granskning analysed the total of 843 district court cases from the five preceding years and found that 58% of all convicted of rape had a foreign background and 40% were born in the Middle East and Africa, with young men from Afghanistan numbering 45 stood out as being the most next most common country of birth after Sweden. When only analysing rape assault (Swedish: överfallsvåldtäkt) cases, that is cases where perpetrator and victim were not previously acquainted, 97 out of 129 were born outside Europe.

In a 2016 report on sexual harassment police found ten cases where groups of men (aged 25–30) or boys (aged 14–16) had surrounded a lone girl and sexually assaulted her while filming, along with groups of girls being subjected to the same experience. Only a few perpetrators were identified and all investigations in Stockholm and Kalmar involved suspects from Afghanistan and Eritrea.

Viral falsehoods have circulated in recent years that tie immigrants and refugees to an alleged surge of crime in Sweden. According to Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at Stockholm University, "What we're hearing is a very, very extreme exaggeration based on a few isolated events, and the claim that it's related to immigration is more or less not true at all." A 2020 pan European comparative study conducted by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention showed that if reported and cleared rapes are measured in a comparable way, the number of rapes in Sweden are close to the European average. According to Klara Selin, a sociologist at the National Council for Crime Prevention, the major reasons why Sweden has a higher rate of rape than other countries is due to the way in which Sweden documents rape ("if a woman reports being raped multiple times by her husband that's recorded as multiple rapes, for instance, not just one report") and a culture where women are encouraged to report rapes. Stina Holmberg at the National Council for Crime Prevention, noted that "there is no basis for drawing the conclusion that crime rates are soaring in Sweden and that that is related to immigration".

In 2017, FactCheck.Org noted that "experts said there is no evidence of a major crime wave." According to official statistics, the reported crime rate in Sweden has risen since 2005 whereas annual government surveys show that the number of Swedes experiencing crime remain steady since 2005, even as Sweden has taken in hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees over the same period. Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at the University of Stockholm, said foreign-born residents are twice as likely to be registered for a crime as native Swedes but that other factors beyond place of birth are at play, such as education level and poverty, and that similar trends occur in European countries that have not taken in a lot of immigrants in recent years.

According to data gathered by Swedish police from October 2015 to January 2016, 5,000 police calls out of 537,466 involved asylum seekers and refugees. According to Felipe Estrada, professor of criminology at Stockholm University, this shows how the media gives disproportionate attention to and exaggerates the alleged criminal involvement of asylum seekers and refugees. Henrik Selin, head of the Department for Intercultural Dialogue at the Swedish Institute, noted that allegations of a surge in immigrant crime after the intake of more than 160,000 immigrants in 2015 have been "highly exaggerated... there is nothing to support the claim that the crime rate took off after the 160,000 came in 2015." While it's true that immigrants have been over-represented among those committing crimes—particularly in some suburban communities heavily populated by immigrants, he said—the issue of crime and immigration is complex. Speaking in February 2017, Manne Gerell, a doctoral student in criminology at Malmö University, noted that while immigrants where disproportionately represented among crime suspects, many of the victims of immigrant crimes were other immigrants.

A Swedish Police report from May 2016 found that there have been 123 incidents of sexual molestation in the country's public baths and pools in 2015 (112 of them were directed against girls). In 55% of cases, the perpetrator could be reasonably identified. From these identified perpetrators, 80% were of foreign origin. The same report found 319 cases of sexual assault on public streets and parks in 2015. In these cases, only 17 suspected perpetrators have been identified, 4 of them Swedish nationals with the remainder being of foreign origin. Another 17 were arrested, but not identified.

In March 2018, newspaper Expressen investigated gang rape court cases from the two preceding years and found that there were 43 men having been convicted. Their average age was 21 and 13 were under the age of 18 when the crime was committed. Of the convicted, 40 out of the 43 were either immigrants (born abroad) or born in Sweden to immigrant parents. Another investigation by newspaper Aftonbladet found that of 112 men and boys convicted for gang rape since July 2012, 82 were born outside Europe. The median age of the victims was 15, while 7 out of 10 perpetrators were between 15 and 20. According to professor Christian Diesen, a foreigner may have a lower threshold to commit sexual assault due to having grown up in a misogynist culture where all women outside the home are interpreted as available. Also professor Henrik Tham stated that there was a clear over-representatation of foreigners and cultural differences, while also adding that few cultures allow such behaviour. Professor Jerzy Sarnecki instead emphasized socioeconomic factors and that police may be more diligient in investigating crimes by foreigners.

Past immigration to Sweden

A 2005 study by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention found that people of foreign background were 2.5 times more likely to be suspected of crimes than people with a Swedish background, including immigrants being four times more likely to be suspected of for lethal violence and robbery, five times more likely to be investigated for sex crimes, and three times more likely to be investigated for violent assault. The report was based on statistics for those "suspected" of offences. The Council for Crime Prevention said that there was "little difference" in the statistics for those suspected of crimes and those actually convicted. A 2006 government report suggests that immigrants face discrimination by law enforcement, which could lead to meaningful differences between those suspected of crimes and those actually convicted. A 2008 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention finds evidence of discrimination towards individuals of foreign descent in the Swedish judicial system. The 2005 report finds that immigrants who entered Sweden during early childhood have lower crime rates than other immigrants. By taking account of socioeconomic factors (gender, age, education and income), the crime rate gap between immigrants and natives decreases.

A 2013 study done by Stockholm University showed that the 2005 study's difference was due to the socioeconomic differences (e.g. family income, growing up in a poor neighborhood) between people born in Sweden and those born abroad. The authors furthermore found "that culture is unlikely to be a strong cause of crime among immigrants".

A study published in 1997 attempted to explain the higher than average crime rates among immigrants to Sweden. It found that between 20 and 25 percent of asylum seekers to Sweden had experienced physical torture, and many suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Other refugees had witnessed a close relative being killed.

The 2005 study reported that persons from North Africa and Western Asia were over-represented in crime statistics, whereas a 1997 paper additionally found immigrants from Finland, South America, Arab world and Eastern Europe to be over-represented in crime statistics. Studies have found that native-born Swedes with high levels of unemployment are also over-represented in crime statistics.

A 1996 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention determined that between 1985 and 1989 individuals born in Iraq, North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia), Africa (excluding Uganda and the North African countries), other Middle East (Jordan, Palestine, Syria), Iran and Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria) were convicted of rape at rates 20, 23, 17, 9, 10 and 18 greater than individuals born in Sweden respectively. Both the 1996 and 2005 reports have been criticized for using insufficient controls for socioeconomic factors.

A 2013 study found that both first- and second-generation immigrants have a higher rate of suspected offenses than indigenous Swedes. While first-generation immigrants have the highest offender rate, the offenders have the lowest average number of offenses, which indicates that there is a high rate of low-rate offending (many suspected offenders with only one single registered offense). The rate of chronic offending (offenders suspected of several offenses) is higher among indigenous Swedes than first-generation immigrants. Second-generation immigrants have higher rates of chronic offending than first-generation immigrants but lower total offender rates.

Turkey

A study has shown that Syrian refugees have no significant effect on crime rates in Turkey.

United Kingdom

See also: Modern immigration to the United Kingdom and Race and crime in the United Kingdom

Historically, Irish immigrants to the United Kingdom in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were considered over-represented amongst those appearing in court. Research suggests that policing strategy may have put immigrants at a disadvantage by targeting only the most public forms of crime, while locals were more likely able to engage in the types of crimes that could be conducted behind locked doors. An analysis of historical courtroom records suggests that despite higher rates of arrest, immigrants were not systematically disadvantaged by the British court system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

On 30 June 2022 there were 9,682 prisoners from 164 different countries in the jails of England and Wales. Albania, Poland and Romania formed the highest percentage of foreign nationals in UK prisons. In total, foreigners represented 12% of the prison population, whereas foreign nationals are 13% of the total population in England and Wales. During the 2000s, there was a 111% increase of foreign nationals in UK prisons. According to one study, "there is little evidence to support the theory that the foreign national prison population continues to grow because foreign nationals are more likely to commit crime than are British citizens or more likely to commit crime of a serious nature". The increase may partly be due to the disproportionate number of convicted for drug offences; crimes associated with illegal immigration (fraud and forgery of government documents, and immigration offenses); ineffective deportation provisions; and a lack of viable options to custody (which affects bail and sentencing decision making).

Research has found no evidence of an average causal impact of immigration on crime in the United Kingdom. One study based on evidence from England and Wales in the 2000s found no evidence of an average causal impact of immigration on crime in England and Wales. No causal impact and no immigrant differences in the likelihood of being arrested were found for London, which saw large immigration changes. A 2017 study offered qualified support for the notion that immigration had contributed to declining crime rates in the UK. A study of two large waves of immigration to the UK (the late 1990s/early 2000s asylum seekers and the post-2004 inflow from EU accession countries) found that the "first wave led to a modest but significant rise in property crime, while the second wave had a small negative impact. There was no effect on violent crime; arrest rates were not different, and changes in crime cannot be ascribed to crimes against immigrants. The findings are consistent with the notion that differences in labor market opportunities of different migrant groups shape their potential impact on crime." A 2013 study found "that crime is significantly lower in those neighborhoods with sizeable immigrant population shares" and that "the crime reducing effect is substantially enhanced if the enclave is composed of immigrants from the same ethnic background." A 2014 study of property crimes based on the Crime and Justice Survey (CJS) of 2003, (a national representative survey where respondents in England and Wales were asked questions regarding their criminal activities), after taking into account the under-reporting of crimes, even found that "immigrants who are located in London and black immigrants are significantly less criminally active than their native counterparts". Another 2014 study found that "areas that have witnessed the greatest percentage of recent immigrants arriving since 2004 have not witnessed higher levels of robbery, violence, or sex offending" but have "experienced higher levels of drug offenses."

It was reported in 2007 that more than one-fifth of solved crimes in London was committed by immigrants. Around a third of all solved, reported sex offences and a half of all solved, reported frauds in the capital were carried out by non-British citizens. A 2008 study found that the crime rate of Eastern European immigrants was the same as that of the indigenous population.

Americas

Canada

A 2014 study found that immigration reduced the property crime rate in Canada: "new immigrants do not have a significant impact on property crime rates, but as they stay longer, more established immigrants actually decrease property crime rates significantly."

Chile

A 2020 study found no relationship between immigration and crime in Chile.

United States

Further information: Illegal immigration to the United States and crime and Race and crime in the United States

There is no empirical evidence that either legal or illegal immigration increase crime rates in the United States. Some research finds that immigration, both legal and illegal might actually reduce crime. A study conducted by Aaron Chalfin, of the American Economic Review journal, found that an increase in immigration in the 1990s saw a decline in US crime rates. It was largely attributed to a reluctance from immigrants to report crimes in fear that they would testify to police.

Early immigration

One of the first political analyses in the U.S. of the relationship between immigration and crime was performed in the beginning of the 20th century by the Dillingham Commission. The Commission found a relationship especially for immigrants from non-Northern European countries, resulting in the sweeping 1920s immigration reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924, which favored immigration from Northern and Northwestern Europe over the supposedly criminally-inclined immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (i.e., mainly Italians, as well as certain Slavs and Jews from Eastern Europe). Recent research is skeptical of the conclusion drawn by the commission. One study finds that, "major government commissions on immigration and crime in the early twentieth century relied on evidence that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate population data, which led them to present partial and sometimes misleading views of the immigrant-native criminality comparison. With improved data and methods, we find that in 1904, prison commitment rates for more serious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitment rate for immigrants was higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely than natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent offenses."

For the early 20th century, one study found that immigrants had "quite similar" imprisonment rates for major crimes as natives in 1904 but lower for major crimes (except violent offenses; the rate was similar) in 1930. Contemporary commissions used dubious data and interpreted it in questionable ways. A study by Harvard economist Nathan Nunn, Yale economist Nancy Qian, and LSE economist Sandra Sequeira found that the 'Age of Mass Migration' (1850–1920) had no long-run effects on crime rates in the United States.

Figures gathered from the records of the Court of general sessions of the New York County in November 1909, showed that 35,8% of crime convictions in the years 1904-08 concerned foreign-born individuals; in comparison, in the year 1900 42.2% of the county's population was foreign-born, and was estimated to be "a few points higher" during the 1904-08 time interval, due to high immigration. The demographics were broken down as following:

"Country of nativity"	Convictions	Per cent
United States	9,026	64.2
Italy	1,239	8.8
Russia	1,002	7.1
Austria	412	2.9
Roumania [sic]	83	.6
England	285	1.9
Ireland	527	3.8
Germany	744	5.3
Scotland	65	.5
Sweden	63	.5
France	75	.5
Other countries	551	3.9
Total foreign:	5,046	35.8

Recent immigration

Most studies in the U.S. have found lower crime rates among immigrants than among non-immigrants, and that higher concentrations of immigrants are associated with lower crime rates. Likewise, a 2018 paper found no statistically significant evidence that refugees to the United States have an impact on crime rates. A separate 2018 paper by scholars at Stanford University's Immigration Policy Lab found that U.S. President Donald Trump's refugee ban (which caused a 66% reduction in refugee resettlement) had no impact on crime rates.

For men between the ages of 18 and 39, the demographic with the highest propensity for crime, the incarceration rate for immigrants is one-fourth that of native-born Americans. These findings contradict popular perceptions that immigration increases crime. Some research even suggests that increases in immigration may partly explain the reduction in the U.S. crime rate. A 2017 study suggests that immigration did not play a significant part in lowering the crime rate. A 2005 study showed that immigration to large U.S. metropolitan areas does not increase, and in some cases decreases, crime rates there. A 2009 study found that recent immigration was not associated with homicide in Austin, Texas. The low crime rates of immigrants to the United States despite having lower levels of education, lower levels of income and residing in urban areas (factors that should lead to higher crime rates) may be due to lower rates of antisocial behavior among immigrants. This phenomenon is known as the immigrant paradox, in which immigrants have better health and behavioral outcomes despite socio-economic disadvantage. A 2015 study estimated that Mexican immigration to metropolitan statistical areas significantly increased aggravated assaults and decreased rape, larceny and motor vehicle theft. Another 2015 study found no significant influence of rates of immigrant presence on homicide in cities. A 2016 study finds no link between immigrant populations and violent crime, although there is a small but significant association between undocumented immigrants and drug-related crime. A 2020 study found that native-born US citizens are incarcerated at higher rates for homicide in Texas than undocumented immigrants.

Multiple studies have found that undocumented immigration to the United States do not increase violent crime. A 2017 study found that "Increased undocumented immigration was significantly associated with reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests, net of other factors." Research finds that Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement program that led to a quarter of a million of detentions, had no observable impact on the crime rate. A 2015 study found that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which legalized almost 3 million immigrants, led to "decreases in crime of 3–5 percent, primarily due to decline in property crimes, equivalent to 120,000–180,000 fewer violent and property crimes committed each year due to legalization." Research has found no statistically significant effect on crime for sanctuary cities—which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being an undocumented immigrant. A 2018 study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that by restricting the employment opportunities for unauthorized immigrants, IRCA likely caused an increase in crime.

There is evidence, however, that second-generation immigrants—that is, US-born children of immigrants—are more crime-prone than their foreign-born parents.

Terrorism

According to a review by The Washington Post fact-checker of the available research and evidence, there is nothing to support President Trump's claim that "the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country." The fact-checker noted that the Government Accountability Office had found that "of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, 73 percent (62) were committed by far-right-wing violent extremist groups, and 27 percent (23) by radical Islamist violent extremists." A bulletin by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security also warned in May 2017 that white supremacist groups were "responsible for a lion's share of violent attacks among domestic extremist groups." According to a report by the New America foundation, of the individuals credibly involved in radical Islamist-inspired activity in the United States since 9/11, the large majority were US-born citizens, not immigrants.

A 2020 study found little evidence of a relationship between unauthorized immigration and terrorism. Studies have found that refugee settlements in the United States have no impact on terrorism or crime.

Oceania

Australia

Further information: Immigration to Australia and Crime in Australia

A 2019 study found no impact of immigration on crime rates in Australia. Foreigners are under-represented in the Australian prison population, according to 2010 figures. A 1987 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology noted that studies had consistently found that migrant populations in Australia had lower crime rates than the Australian-born population.

The alleged link between immigration and criminality has been a longstanding meme in Australian history with many of the original immigrants being convicts. During the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of emigrants to the country arrived from Italy and Greece, and were shortly afterwards associated with local crime. This culminated in the "Greek conspiracy case" of the 1970s, when Greek physicians were accused of defrauding the Medibank system. The police were later found to have conducted investigations improperly, and the doctors were eventually cleared of all charges. After the demise of the White Australia policy restricting non-European immigration, the first large settler communities from Asia emerged. This development was accompanied by a moral panic regarding a potential spike in criminal activity by the Triads and similar organizations. In 1978, the erstwhile weekly The National Times also reported on involvement in the local drug trade by Calabrian Italian, Turkish, Lebanese and Chinese dealers.

Discourse surrounding immigrant crime reached a head in the late 1990s. The fatal stabbing of a Korean teenager in Punchbowl in October 1998 followed by a drive-by shooting of the Lakemba police station prompted then New South Wales Premier Bob Carr and NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan to blame the incidents on Lebanese gangs. Spurred on by the War on Terror, immigrant identities became increasingly criminalized in the popular Sydney media. By the mid-2000s and the outbreak of the Cronulla riots, sensationalist broadcast and tabloid media representations had reinforced existing stereotypes of immigrant communities as criminal entities and ethnic enclaves as violent and dangerous areas.

The only reliable statistics on immigrant crime in Australia are based on imprisonment rates by place of birth. As of 1999, this data indicated that immigrants from Vietnam (2.7 per 1,000 of population), Lebanon (1.6) and New Zealand (1.6) were over-represented within the national criminal justice system. Compared to the Australian-born (1), immigrants from Italy (0.6), the United Kingdom (0.6), Ireland (0.6) and Greece (0.5) were under-represented.

Victoria Police said in 2012 that Sudanese immigrants around are five times more likely to commit crimes than other state residents. The rate of offending in the Sudanese community was 7109.1 per 100,000 individuals, and 1301.0 per 100,000 for the wider Victoria community. Robbery and assault said to have been the most common types of crime committed by the Sudanese residents, with assault purported to represent 29.5% and 24.3% of all offences, respectively. The overall proportion of crime in the state said to have been committed by members of the Sudanese community was 0.92 percent.People born in Sudan are around 0.1percent, respectively, of Victoria's population. Journalist Dan Oakes, writing in The Age, noted that individuals arrested and charged might have been falsely claiming to belong to that community. In 2015, Sudanese-born youths were "vastly over-represented" in Victoria Police LEAP data, responsible for 7.44 per cent of alleged home invasions, 5.65 per cent of car thefts and 13.9 per cent of aggravated robberies. A similar overrepresentation occurs in Kenyan-born youths. In January 2018, Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton that there was an "issue with overrepresentation by African youth in serious and violent offending as well as public disorder issues".

In 2010, six applicants brought charges of impropriety against several members of the Victorian Police, the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, and the State of Victoria in the Melbourne areas of Flemington and Kensington. The ensuing Haile-Michael v Konstantinidis case alleged various forms of mistreatment by the public officials in violation of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. In March 2012, an order of discovery was made, whereby established statistician Ian Gordon of the University of Melbourne independently analysed Victorian Police LEAP data from Flemington and North Melbourne (2005–2008). The report concluded that residents from Africa were two and a half times more likely to be subjected to an arbitrary "stop and search" than their representation in the population. Although the justification provided for such disproportionate policing measures was over-representation in local crime statistics, the study found that the same police LEAP data in reality showed that male immigrants from Africa on average committed substantially less crime than male immigrants from other backgrounds. Despite this, the latter alleged male offenders were observed to be 8.5 times more likely not to be the subject of a police "field contact". The case was eventually settled on 18 February 2013, with a landmark agreement that the Victoria Police would publicly review its "field contact" and training processes. The inquiry is expected to help police identify areas where discrimination in the criminal justice system has the potential to or does occur; implement institutional reforms as pre-emptive measures in terms of training, policy and practice; predicate changes on international law enforcement best practices; ammeliorate the local police's interactions with new immigrants and ethnic minorities, as well as with the Aboriginal community; and serve as a benchmark for proper conduct vis-a-vis other police departments throughout the country.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics regularly publishes characteristics of those incarcerated including country of birth. The 2014 figures show that in general native-born Australians, New Zealanders, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Sudanese, Iraqi and people from Fiji are responsible for higher share of crime than their share in the population (overrepresented), while people from the UK, the Chinese and people from Philippines are responsible for a lower share (underrepresented).

Prisoner characteristics in Australia, 2014

Country of Birth	Homicide and related offenses%	All Crime%	National Population%
Australia	76.3	81.1	69.8
New Zealand	3.3	3.0	2.2
Vietnam	2.1	2.3	0.9
United Kingdom	3.2	1.8	5.1
China	0.9	0.7	1.5
Lebanon	0.6	0.6	0.4
Sudan	0.3	0.4	0.1
Iraq	0.6	0.4	0.2
Philippines	0.5	0.4	0.8
Fiji	0.5	0.4	0.3
Other	10.0	7.9	18.7
Total (excl. Australia)	22.0	17.9	30.2

New Zealand

Foreigners are under-represented in the New Zealand prison population, according to 2010 figures.

Perception of immigrant criminality

Research suggests that people overestimate the relationship between immigration and criminality. A 2016 study of Belgium found that living in an ethnically diverse community led to a greater fear of crime, unrelated to the actual crime rate. A 2015 study found that the increase in immigration flows into western European countries that took place in the 2000s did "not affect crime victimization, but it is associated with an increase in the fear of crime, the latter being consistently and positively correlated with the natives' unfavourable attitude toward immigrants." Americans dramatically overestimate the relationship between refugees and terrorism. A 2018 study found that media coverage of immigrants in the United States has a general tendency to emphasize illegality and/or criminal behavior in a way that is inconsistent with actual immigrant demographics.

Political consequences

Research suggests that the perception that there is a positive causal link between immigration and crime leads to greater support for anti-immigration policies or parties. Research also suggests a vicious cycle of bigotry and immigrant alienation could exacerbate immigrant criminality and bigotry. For instance, UC San Diego political scientist Claire Adida, Stanford University political scientist David Laitin, and Sorbonne University economist Marie-Anne Valfort argue:

[F]ear-based policies that target groups of people according to their religion or region of origin are counter-productive. Our own research, which explains the failed integration of Muslim immigrants in France, suggests that such policies can feed into a vicious cycle that damages national security. French Islamophobia—a response to cultural difference—has encouraged Muslim immigrants to withdraw from French society, which then feeds back into French Islamophobia, thus further exacerbating Muslims' alienation, and so on. Indeed, the failure of French security in 2015 was likely due to police tactics that intimidated rather than welcomed the children of immigrants—an approach that makes it hard to obtain crucial information from community members about potential threats.

A study of the long-run effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks found that the post-9/11 increase in hate crimes against Muslims decreased assimilation by Muslim immigrants. Controlling for relevant factors, the authors found that "Muslim immigrants living in states with the sharpest increase in hate crimes also exhibit: greater chances of marrying within their own ethnic group; higher fertility; lower female labour force participation; and lower English proficiency."

States that experience terrorist acts on their own soil or against their own citizens are more likely to adopt stricter restrictions on asylum recognition. Individuals who believe that African Americans and Hispanics are more prone to violence are more likely to support capital punishment.

The Dillingham Commission singled out immigrants from Southern Europe for their involvement in violent crime (even though the data did not support its conclusions). The commission's overall findings provided the rationale for sweeping 1920s immigration-reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which favored immigration from northern and western Europe by restricting the annual number of immigrants from any given country to 3 percent of the total number of people from that country living in the United States in 1910. The movement for immigration restriction that the Dillingham Commission helped to stimulate culminated in the National Origins Formula, part of the Immigration Act of 1924, which capped national immigration at 150,000 annually and completely barred immigration from Asia.

See also

• Opposition to immigration
• Race and crime
• Youth bulge

Further reading

• Adelman, Robert, Lesley Williams Reid, Gail Markle, Saskia Weiss, and Charles Jaret. 2017. "Urban crime rates and the changing face of immigration: Evidence across four decades Archived 19 July 2023 at the Wayback Machine." Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice 15(1): 52–77. doi:10.1080/15377938.2016.1261057. S2CID 147588658.
• Bersani, Bianca E. 2014. "An Examination of First and Second Generation Immigrant Offending Trajectories." Justice Quarterly 31(2):315–43. doi:10.1080/07418825.2012.659200. S2CID 144240275.
• Butcher, Kristin F., and Anne Morrison Piehl. 1998. "Cross-city evidence on the relationship between immigration and crime." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 17(3):457–93. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1520-6688(199822)17:3<457::AID-PAM4>3.0.CO;2-F
• Davies, Garth, and Jeffrey Fagan. 2012. "Crime and Enforcement in Immigrant Neighborhoods Evidence from New York City." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 641(1):99–124. doi:10.1177/0002716212438938. S2CID 143497882.
• Lee, Matthew T., Ramiro Martinez, and Richard Rosenfeld. 2001. "Does Immigration Increase Homicide?" Sociological Quarterly 42(4):559–80. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2001.tb01780.x. S2CID 143182621.
• Light, Michael T., and Jeffery T. Ulmer. 2016. "Explaining the Gaps in White, Black, and Hispanic Violence since 1990 Accounting for Immigration, Incarceration, and Inequality Archived 19 July 2023 at the Wayback Machine." American Sociological Review 81(2):290–315. doi:10.1177/0003122416635667. S2CID 53346960.
• Martinez, Ramiro, Matthew T. Lee, and Amie L. Nielsen. 2004. "Segmented Assimilation, Local Context and Determinants of Drug Violence in Miami and San Diego: Does Ethnicity and Immigration Matter?" International Migration Review 38(1):131–57. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00191.x. S2CID 144567229.
• Martinez Jr, Ramiro, Jacob I. Stowell, and Janice A. Iwama. 2016. "The Role of Immigration: Race/Ethnicity and San Diego Homicides Since 1970." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 32(3):471–88. doi:10.1007/s10940-016-9294-9. S2CID 147072245.
• Martínez, Ramiro, and Abel Valenzuela, eds. 2006. Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence Archived 25 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine. New York University Press.
• Ousey, Graham C., and Charis E. Kubrin. 2013. "Immigration and the Changing Nature of Homicide in US Cities, 1980–2010." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 30(3):453–83. doi:10.1007/s10940-013-9210-5. S2CID 42681671.
• Reid, Lesley Williams, Harald E. Weiss, Robert M. Adelman, and Charles Jaret. 2005. "The immigration–crime relationship: Evidence across US metropolitan areas." Social Science Research 34(4):757–80. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2005.01.001.
• Vaughn, Michael G., and Christopher P. Salas-Wright. 2018. "Immigrants commit crime and violence at lower rates than the US-born Americans." Annals of Epidemiology 28(1):58–60.e1. doi:10.1016/j.annepidem.2017.10.016. PMID 29153492.
• Wolff, Kevin T., Michael T. Baglivio, Jonathan Intravia, and Alex R. Piquero. 2015. "The protective impact of immigrant concentration on juvenile recidivism: A statewide analysis of youth offenders." Journal of Criminal Justice 43(6):522–31. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2015.05.004.
• "Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It? (PPIC Publication)". www.ppic.org. Archived from the original on 14 May 2016. Retrieved 23 June 2016.

Discrimination

Europe

Research suggests that police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by minorities and in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of racial minorities among crime suspects in Sweden, Italy, and England and Wales. Research also suggests that there may be possible discrimination by the judicial system, which contributes to a higher number of convictions for racial minorities in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Denmark and France. A 2018 study found that the Dutch are less likely to reciprocate in games played with immigrants than the native Dutch.

Several meta-analyses find extensive evidence of ethnic and racial discrimination in hiring in the North-American and European labor markets. A 2016 meta-analysis of 738 correspondence tests in 43 separate studies conducted in OECD countries between 1990 and 2015 finds that there is extensive racial discrimination in hiring decisions in Europe and North-America. Equivalent minority candidates need to send around 50% more applications to be invited for an interview than majority candidates.

A 2014 meta-analysis found extensive evidence of racial and ethnic discrimination in the housing market of several European countries.

The United States

Business

A 2014 meta-analysis of racial discrimination in product markets found extensive evidence of minority applicants being quoted higher prices for products. A 1995 study found that car dealers "quoted significantly lower prices to white males than to black or female test buyers using identical, scripted bargaining strategies." A 2013 study found that eBay sellers of iPods received 21 percent more offers if a white hand held the iPod in the photo than a black hand.

Criminal justice system

Research suggests that police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by minorities and in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of racial minorities among crime suspects. Research also suggests that there may be possible discrimination by the judicial system, which contributes to a higher number of convictions for racial minorities. A 2012 study found that "(i) juries formed from all-white jury pools convict black defendants significantly (16 percentage points) more often than white defendants, and (ii) this gap in conviction rates is entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one black member." Research has found evidence of in-group bias, where "black (white) juveniles who are randomly assigned to black (white) judges are more likely to get incarcerated (as opposed to being placed on probation), and they receive longer sentences." In-group bias has also been observed when it comes to traffic citations, as black and white cops are more likely to cite out-groups.

Education

A 2015 study using correspondence tests "found that when considering requests from prospective students seeking mentoring in the future, faculty were significantly more responsive to White males than to all other categories of students, collectively, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions."

According to an analysis of the National Study of College Experience, elite colleges may favor minority applicants due to affirmative action policies.

A 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that math teachers discriminate against the children of immigrants. When the teachers were informed about negative stereotypes towards the children of immigrants, they gave higher grades to the children of immigrants.

Housing

A 2014 meta-analysis found extensive evidence of racial discrimination in the American housing market. Minority applicants for housing needed to make many more enquiries to view properties. Geographical steering of African-Americans in US housing remained significant. A 2003 study finds "evidence that agents interpret an initial housing request as an indication of a customer's preferences, but also are more likely to withhold a house from all customers when it is in an integrated suburban neighborhood (redlining). Moreover, agents' marketing efforts increase with asking price for white, but not for black, customers; blacks are more likely than whites to see houses in suburban, integrated areas (steering); and the houses agents show are more likely to deviate from the initial request when the customer is black than when the customer is white. These three findings are consistent with the possibility that agents act upon the belief that some types of transactions are relatively unlikely for black customers (statistical discrimination)."

A report by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development where the department sent African-Americans and whites to look at apartments found that African-Americans were shown fewer apartments to rent and houses for sale.

Labor market

Several meta-analyses find extensive evidence of ethnic and racial discrimination in hiring in the American labor market. A 2016 meta-analysis of 738 correspondence tests – tests where identical CVs for stereotypically black and white names were sent to employers – in 43 separate studies conducted in OECD countries between 1990 and 2015 finds that there is extensive racial discrimination in hiring decisions in Europe and North-America. These correspondence tests showed that equivalent minority candidates need to send around 50% more applications to be invited for an interview than majority candidates. A study that examine the job applications of actual people provided with identical résumés and similar interview training showed that African-American applicants with no criminal record were offered jobs at a rate as low as white applicants who had criminal records.

Impact on the sending country

Remittances increase living standards in the country of origin. Remittances are a large share of the GDP of many developing countries. A study on remittances to Mexico found that remittances lead to a substantial increase in the availability of public services in Mexico, surpassing government spending in some localities.

Research finds that emigration and low migration barriers has net positive effects on human capital formation in the sending countries. This means that there is a "brain gain" instead of a "brain drain" to emigration.

One study finds that sending countries benefit indirectly in the long-run on the emigration of skilled workers because those skilled workers are able to innovate more in developed countries, which the sending countries are able to benefit on as a positive externality. Greater emigration of skilled workers consequently leads to greater economic growth and welfare improvements in the long-run. The negative effects of high-skill emigration remain largely unfounded. According to economist Michael Clemens, it has not been shown that restrictions on high-skill emigration reduce shortages in the countries of origin.

Research also suggests that emigration, remittances and return migration can have a positive impact on political institutions and democratization in the country of origin. Research also shows that remittances can lower the risk of civil war in the country of origin. Return migration from countries with liberal gender norms has been associated with the transfer of liberal gender norms to the home country.

Research suggests that emigration causes an increase in the wages of those who remain in the country of origin. A 2014 survey of the existing literature on emigration finds that a 10 percent emigrant supply shock would increase wages in the sending country by 2–5.5%. A study of emigration from Poland shows that it led to a slight increase in wages for high- and medium-skilled workers for remaining Poles. A 2013 study finds that emigration from Eastern Europe after the 2004 EU enlargement increased the wages of remaining young workers in the country of origin by 6%, while it had no effect on the wages of old workers. The wages of Lithuanian men increased as a result of post-EU enlargement emigration. Return migration is associated with greater household firm revenues.

Some research shows that the remittance effect is not strong enough to make the remaining natives in countries with high emigration flows better off.

See also

• Childhood and migration
• Criticism of multiculturalism
• Feminization of migration
• White genocide conspiracy theory
• Human overpopulation
• Human migration
• Immigration and crime
• Immigration law
• Immigration reform
• Multiculturalism
• Opposition to immigration
• People smuggling
• Political demography
• Repatriation
• Replacement migration
• Right of foreigners to vote
• First world privilege
• List of countries by net migration rate
• List of sovereign states and dependent territories by population density

Further reading

• Appel, Jacob. The Ethical Case for an Open Immigration Policy 4 May 2009.
• Balin, Bryan J. (2008). "State Immigration Legislation and Immigrant Flows: An Analysis" (PDF). Johns Hopkins University. Retrieved 15 October 2018. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Bauder, Harald. Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Borjas, George J. (2014). Immigration Economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-04977-2.
• Borjas, George. "Increasing the Supply of Labor Through Immigration". Center for Immigration Studies, May 2004.
• Burtless, Gary (1 December 2009). "Impact of Immigration on the Distribution of American Well-Being" (PDF). Brookings Institution. SSRN 1553271. Retrieved 15 October 2018. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• De La Torre, Miguel A., Trails of Hope and Terror: Testimonies on Immigration. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 2009.
• Esbenshade, Jill. Division and Dislocation: Regulating Immigration through Local Housing Ordinances. Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, Summer 2007.
• Ewing, Walter A. Border Insecurity: U.S. Border-Enforcement Policies and National Security, Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, Spring 2006.
• Fell, Peter and Hayes, Debra. What are they Doing Here? A Critical Guide to Asylum and Immigration, Birmimgham, Venture Press, 2007.
• Fitzgerald, David Scott; Cook-Martin, David (2014). Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674-72904-9.
• Immigration Policy Center. Economic Growth & Immigration: Bridging the Demographic Divide. Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, November 2005.
• "Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts". Cato Institute. 1995. Archived from the original on 1 July 2010.
• Karakayali, Nedim (2005). "Duality and Diversity in the Lives of Immigrant Children: Rethinking the 'Problem of Second Generation' in Light of Immigrant Autobiographies". Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 42 (3): 325–344.
• Kolb, Eva (2009). The Evolution of New York City's Multiculturalism: Melting Pot or Salad Bowl : Immigrants in New York from the 19th Century until the End of the Gilded Age (1. Aufl ed.). Books on Demand. ISBN 978-3-8370-9303-2.
• Legrain, Philippe (2007). Immigrants : your country needs them (First Princetonition ed.). Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-73248-2.
• Massey, Douglas S. Beyond the Border Buildup: Towards a New Approach to Mexico-U.S. Migration. Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, September 2005.
• Massey, Douglas S.; Arango, Joaquín; Graeme, Hugo; Kouaouci, Ali; Adela, Pellegrino; Taylor, J. Edward (2005). Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-928276-0.
• Meilander, Peter C. (2001). Toward a theory of immigration (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-24034-9.
• Molina, Natalia. Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1940. University of California Press, 2006.
• Myers, Dowell (22 February 2007). Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America. Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 978-0-87154-636-4.
• Passel, Jeffrey S. Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population. Pew Hispanic Center, March 2005.
• Passel, Jeffrey S. Growing Share of Immigrants Choosing Naturalization. Pew Hispanic Center, March 2007.
• Passel, Jeffrey S. and Roberto Suro. Rise, Peak and Decline: Trends in U.S. Immigration. Pew Hispanic Center, September 2005.
• Pearce, Susan C. Immigrant Women in the United States: A Demographic Portrait. Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, Summer 2006.
• Portes, Alejandro; Böröcz, József (1989). "Contemporary Immigration: Theoretical Perspectives on Its Determinants and Modes of Incorporation" (PDF). The International Migration Review. 23 (3 (Special Silver Anniversary Issue: International Migration an Assessment for the 90's )): 606–630. doi:10.2307/2546431. JSTOR 2546431. Retrieved 15 October 2018.
• Rumbaut, Ruben and Walter Ewing. "The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men." The Immigration Policy Center, Spring 2007.
• Sintès Pierre, La raison du mouvement : territoires et réseaux de migrants albanais en Grèce, Karthala, Maison Méditerranéenne des sciences de l'homme, Ecole française d'Athènes, Paris - Aix-en-Provence - Athens, 2010.
• Sirkeci, Ibrahim (2006). The Environment of Insecurity in Turkey and the Emigration of Turkish Kurds to Germany. New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 9780773457393. Retrieved 15 October 2018. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Valle, Isabel (January 1994). Fields of Toil: A Migrant Family's Journey. Washington State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87422-101-5.
• West, Lorane A. (2004). Color: Latino Voices in the Pacific Northwest. Washington State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87422-274-6.
• Zolberg, Aristide R. (2006). A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02218-8.