The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rate 1

HOW DOES LEGAL IMMIGRATION EFFECT VIOLENT CRIME RATE IN THE UNITED

STATES?

Jordyn Horvath

University of Wisconsin Stout

Applied Social Sciences (History and Political Science)

Advisor: Zach Raff

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 2

Abstract

This study explored the impact of legal immigration populations in each state and violent crime

rate’s in each state. Using data from census.gov and AmericanFactFinder.com, I composed full

population, legal immigration, percent of people below the poverty line, and violent crime rate

percentage for each state from 2010 to 2017. Monitoring for regional and population differences,

I hypothesized that the relationship would be a positive relationship between X being

immigration population and Y being crime rate per 100,000 people. I hypothesize that there will

be no effect on violent crime rate because of immigration population. My results were there is a

positive relationship between the two, so I rejected my null hypothesis.

Keywords: Immigration, population, crime rate, violent, legal, region, state, year
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 3

1. Introduction

In the United States, population has grown every year, and keeps growing. With with legal

immigration, it has fluctuated greatly from decade to decade. According to the U.S. census,

during 1880 and the 1920’s there was an annual rate of 600,000 people immigrating to the

United States. (Immigrationeis.org) The United States called this immigration fluctuation period

the “The Great Wave”, but at the time it was not as directly frowned upon by many people, or it

wasn’t criticized as often by the news or politicians. There was a huge need for factory workers

at this time and this position was quickly filled by European immigrants.

As time has gone on, there has been an overall increase in immigration to the United States.

Not for work but this time for the idea of the “American Dream”. I have always been very

fascinated with why people think America is so much better than their own countries, and this

research is to help me possibly find why people may think this.

I have also been intrigued most of my life by crime, whether in books, movies, or television

shows, it is something I enjoy learning about. This is how I got the idea to see if there is any

correlation between crime and immigration in the USA. Right away, when looking over previous

studies on the topic, I was able to see a trend in no correlation or a negative correlation between

the two variables.

My research question is “How has legal immigration effected violent crime rate in the United

States?” To conduct this study, I examined the population, legal immigrant population, violent

crime rates per 100,000 people, and people below poverty in each state and how they have

changed over the past eight years. Then, I examined the differences in regions and states to see if

different areas had different results.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 4

2. Literature Review

In the summer of 2007 immigration rates completely spiked and the study also found a

spike in crime as well. It was found that third generation immigrants had a larger likelihood of

committing a crime than a first generation immigrant, the researcher found this because he

believed it was likely first generation immigrants were more afraid of being caught by

authorities. (Sampson. Robert J. 2008). Many studies from this time looked over crime and

immigration to find relationships between the two. “In today’s society, then, I would hypothesize

that immigration and the increasing cultural diversity that accompanies it generate the sort of

conflicts of culture that lead not to increased crime but nearly the opposite.” (Sampson).

Often people stake claim and assumptions on the idea of crime and immigration being

related, looking into large metro areas and crime rates it was found that the immigration vs.

crime question is difficult to answer and there is so many for questions to be asked. (Williams.

2002) In most of the studies, there is no definite answer to be had, because of the majority of the

studies only look at certain areas or locations.

“Exploring the Connection between Immigration and Violent Crime Rates in U.S. Cities

1980-2000” by Graham C. Ousey and Charis E. Kubrin. Like the previous study there was many

inputs on public opinion on whether or not the immigration increase has anything to do with the

increase or decrease in crime rates. That being said this basically had the same question as the

studies prior to this one. The data this study collected was focused around the Cities in the US

that are very large between the years 1980-2000.

The cities studied had to have a minimum population of 100,000 people and in the united

states during this time period 173 cities met this-criteria. The study identifies the dependent

variable as being the violent crime rate and the independent variable being the percentage of the
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 5

population made up of foreign-born humans who have immigrated in the past decade. They also

identified the second independent variable as being “Measure of linguistic isolation” they talked

about including people who speak English “Not Well” and “Not at All”.”. The study also

discusses the analytic strategy and how there may be some fixed effect linear regression models

in the data. All of the studies or literature I found, had the same or similar results, finding no

negative correlation between immigration and crime rates in the United States.
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 6

3. Data

My research tests whether legal immigration rates have a positive or negative effect on

violent crime rates. I hypothesize that there is a negative or no correlation between the two. The

reasoning for that hypothesis comes from previous studies and existing literature and the

relationship between immigration and crime rates in the United States. States with a higher

immigration population have been speculated to have a higher crime rate. This is something

almost assumed by large numbers of people. The data looks at eight years in all 50 states,

spreading from the years 2010 to 2017. I chose these years because they were the most recent

and after the year 2007 there was a large increase in immigration again and I thought it would

show clearly within the data I used. The data also covers the population, immigration population,

amount of the states below poverty level and violent crime rate for each of those years as well as

what regions each of the states are in, in the United States. My simple equation will look like

Yi(crimeRate)=0+1X1i(ImmPOPper) + Ui. The Ui term is my error term trying to act as a

“catch all” for all other significant actors that you haven’t included in the equation. I originally

wanted to look at nonviolent crimes but figured with violent I would be able to have a more

robust finding within my data. I got almost all of my data for population, poverty levels and

immigration population from census.gov, I found and analyzed all of my crime rate reports from

the website AmericasHealthRankings.org, this website proved super helpful in covering crime

rates in the United States.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 7

Variable Descriptions

State: State abbreviations

Year: Years 2010-2017

Pop: Population for each year and state

ImmPOPper: Foreign born citizens in each state for each year covered

CrimRatePer100000: Violent crime rates in each state per 100,000 people

PovLevel: Amount of the state below the poverty level

LnPop: Logged Population totals for each state

MW: Midwest region

W: West region

S: South region

NE: Northeast region

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 8

Summary Statistics

Variable Mean Standard Deviation

Population 6335839.64 7043492.37

Immigration population 8.95 6.13

Crime rate per 100,000 357.83 133.45

Below Poverty level 14.4 3.106

LnPop 15.17 1.011

Midwest .24 .427

West .26 .439

South .32 .467

Northeast .18 .384

The standard deviations for population, immigration population, below poverty level, and

lnpopulation, and crime rate per 100,00 people are very high. This means that those three

variables are more widely spread and more reliable because of the larger range. The other four

variables have significantly lowers standard deviations from the first three, meaning that they

might be less reliable variables in my data set.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 9

4. Analysis

Equation 1.

Yi(CrimeRate)=B0+B1X1i(ImmPOPper)+Ui

The null hypothesis for this model was that immigration population doesn’t have a direct

effect on the violent crime rate. I am rejecting the null hypothesis because the p-value is low and

the t-stat is high. The immigration population had a t-stat of 3.83 which is over the 1.96 at 95%

level, making this statistically significant. My results say that an increase in immigration causes

an increase in crime. This is clearly a result of OVB (omitted variable bias), because many things

can also effect the violent crime rate. For example, both crime rate and immigration are

increasing in the United States over time which is very obvious throughout my dataset.

Interpretation:

A 1 unit change in immigration population is associated with a 4.11 change in crime rate

per 100,000 people.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 10

Equation 2.

Yi(CrimeRate)=B0+B1X1i(ImmPOPPer)+B2x2i(povLevel)+Ui

The null hypothesis for this model was that immigration population doesn’t have a direct

effect on the violent crime rate. I am rejecting the null hypothesis because the p-value is low and

the t-stat is high. The results show that 2 of the variables are above the T-stat of 1.96 at the 95%

except for violent crime rate. The Coefficient also went down. I have included an extra X

variable(povLevel) to see if that would have an effect on my Y, which helps because now my

entire Coefficient isn’t being absorbed for immigration rate. My results say that an increase in

immigration causes an increase in crime. I am also rejecting the null hypothesis that poverty

level has no effect on violent crime; but have found that higher poverty means higher crime.

Interpretation:

A 1 unit change in immigration population is associated with a 5.92 change in crime rate

per 100,000 people. A 1 unit change in percent of people below the poverty level is associated

with a 17.47 change in crime rate per 100,000 people.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 11

Equation 3.

Yi(CrimRate)=B0+B1X1i(ImmigrationPop)+B2X2i(BelowPovertyLevel)+ 

1w1(Midwest)+  2W2(West)+3W3 (South)+Ui

The null hypothesis for this model was that immigration population doesn’t have a direct

effect on the violent crime rate. I am rejecting the null hypothesis because the p-value is low and

the t-stat is high. The results show that 5 of the variables are above the T-stat of 1.96 at the 95%

except for violent crime rate. I have included an extra X variable(povLevel) to see if that would

have an effect on my Y, which helps because now my entire Coefficient isn’t being absorbed for

immigration rate. I have also included three control proxies () in my regression equation to test

if regions would have an effect on my regression equation. My results show that I am rejecting

the null hypothesis that poverty level and immigration population have no effect on violent

crime. They actually have a positive effect on violent crime, and I can confidently say my data

are robust. The added regions to this regression equation show that the Midwest, West, and
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 12

South are higher in violent crime in comparison to the Northeast. Even though all of my

regression equations, show that there is a positive correlation with the X variables and the

Violent Crime Rate, I still have a lot of OVB out there to be discovered.

Intrepretations:

A 1 unit change in immigration population is associated with a 6.96 change in crime rate

per 100,000 people.

A 1 unit change in percent of people below the poverty level is associated with a 9.82

change in crime rate per 100,000 people.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 13

Robust Test

Coefficient
P-Value

The table above is a test for robustness among my data. Robustness is when your

empirical results are strong and consistent amongst a number of different models or sub samples.

To have a robust data set, you want to have the same sign (+/-) and same significance among

your P-Values and Coefficients. It is a model of my three regression equation models, and the

top line of each variable is the Coefficient and the bottom are the P-values. My results are telling

me that for immigration and percent of people below the poverty line they both are extremely

robust because of how low the P-Values are. In the model above, for example, immigration from

all three models are way smaller than a P-value of .05 at the 95% level, so we reject the null

hypothesis. And the same goes for povLevel, both of the P-Values in Models 2 and 3 are

extremely low meaning we reject the null hypothesis.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 14

Multicollinearity

X1i(Immpop)=B0+B2X2i(PovLevel)+B3X3i(lnpop)+Ui

Next, I wanted to test for perfect and imperfect multicollinearity(MC) because I wanted

to see if even though my data are robust and statistically significant if they had any

multicollinearity. MC is when two or more of your X’s are highly or perfectly correlated. This is

bad! There are two types of MC, perfect and imperfect. Perfect MC is when regressions fail

completely, when 1 regressor (X) is a perfect linear function of another regressor (X). This

makes it impossible to compute OLS (ordinary least squares). So, on a data set, perfect MC

would be where X1i and X2i are exactly the same variable. Imperfect MC is when two or more

X’s are highly but not perfectly correlated. Which means they may not produce the exact same

effect on Y but they can be very similar. For running a test for MC in my data, I pushed my X1i

variable which was immigration population to be my new Y independent variable and then my
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 15

new primary X2i dependent variable is people below poverty level and my X3i dependent is the

population total percentage for each state. My data proved to not be Multicollinearity because

my regressors both had different effects on Y.

VIF (Variance Inflation Factors)

Next, I tested my data for VIF, which is a statistic that quantifies the level of inflated

variance of our estimates, as a result of multicollinearity. The way to test for VIF, is the equation

1/(1-R^2) so in this case I my equation would be 1/(1-0.38976805) = 1.666322392. This is really

good! If this VIF is less than 10 there is no issues with imperfect or perfect MC. I ran this same

equation as having poverty level as my Y and then moving immigration population back into the

X section to test for the same results and I got the same results, under 10 so no issues with

imperfect or perfect MC.

The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 16

Linear Log Model

Yi(crimerate)=B0X1i(immPOPper)+B2X2i(PovLevel)+B3ln(X3i)(lnPOP)+ 

1w1(Midwest)+  2W2(West)+3W3 (South)+Ui

The table above shows that I used the Linear Log model, which is when one’s Y

variable is not log transformed, but at least one of the X Variables are. I used the linerar log

model because in population there is such a large range, I thought talking in percentages would

make this easier. For my data, I added in another x variable, so I chose to add in total population

of the states, used the logging equaition (=ln(pop)) to do this, and then added it as my B3X3i

variable. Looking at the table above, I am able to reject the null hypothesis of immigration

having effects on violent crime rate, because all of the data except lnpop are above a T-Stat of

1.96 at the 95% level. A 1 % change in immigration population is associated with a .01(240.13)

unit change in crime rate per 100,000 people, holding all else constant.
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 17

General Non Linear Model

Yi(CrimeRate)=B0+B1X1i+B2X1i^2+B3X1i^3+B4X1i^4+B5X1i^5+Ui

I identified that in my scatter plot there was no linear relationship, and found at least five

inflection points, and decided to run a general non linear equation to see if making changes to my

X would effect Y. My primary goal of this was to find how the changes in my X’s(Population)

are affecting Y(CrimeRate). I chose total population with its large range for the X in my

equation, also because it is a continuous variable, and I ran it to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th power, to

be able to run the regression. I found that the increase in population has a nonlinear effect on

crime rates. So I performed sequential hypothesis testing and found the model that produced the

most precise estimates. Final thoughts on this are that my data shows that when population

grows, the effects just keep growing larger when population gets high!
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 18

5. Results/Analysis

The data and statistical tests concluded that immigration population might have

some effect on violent crime rate per 100,000 people. However, overall population,

percent of people below poverty level, and which region the state was located in also

had some effects on violent crime rate as well. All of the variables I used had a

positive relationship with violent crime rate. So if there was a higher immigration

population, there was a strong chance there will be a higher percentage of violent

crime rate per 100,000 people.

This was not orginially the forseen results because of the recent and modern

research and studies done on the topic. My orgininal hypothesis was that immigration

population had no effect on violent crime rate. When I added the other variables I was

able to see that overall population as well as percent of people below the poverty line

and these extra X variables also have a positive effect on violent crime rate, meaning

that there is an increase crime rate.

Now I understand that the with the population growing constantly this creates

growth in crime rate, I think that I still have some omitted variable bias in my study,

there is a lot of other factors I could have looked at for this study. I believe other

factors like violent crime rates committed by legal immigrants and not total

population would have a different effect then what my data are showing.

I believe this is such an important topic and there are so many new ways to

research and study it. If I were to further my research I would want to look at more
The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 19

specific areas, genders, ages and even education levels to see how those had an effect

on violent crime rates. In other literature there was a study where they examined

social structure and were able to find a negative correlation with that and crime rates, I

think looking more in depth would be something I am definitely interested in

considering in the future.

 The Effect of Legal Immigration on Violent Crime Rates 20

References

“Violent Crime Rates for Every State in America (Hover over States to Display
Rankings).” Violent Crime Statistics by State | Interactive Crime Map 2017, www.santarosa-
lawyer.com/united- states-crime-map-2017/.

“AHR.” Explore Violent Crime In Alabama, 2018,

www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measure/Crime/state/AL?edition-year=2015.

Ousey, et al. “Exploring the Connection between Immigration and Violent Crime Rates in U.S. Cities, 1980–
2000 | Social Problems | Oxford Academic.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 30 July 2014,
academic.oup.com/socpro/article/56/3/447/1707591/Exploring-the-Connection-between-
Immigration-and.

Sampson, Robert j. “Rethinking Crime and Immigration.” Sage Journals, 1 Feb. 2008,
www.bing.com/cr?IG=55F1644B639F4503BF025E9C241F9F03&CID=340780A3D9D366102C1C8B40
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dlJDA%26keytype%3dref%26siteid%3dspctx&p=DevEx.LB.1,5514.1.

Data Access and Dissemination Systems (DADS). “Your Geography Selections.” American FactFinder - Results,
5 Oct. 2010,
factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=PEP_2017_PEPANNRE
S&src=pt.