Do Illegal Aliens Make Crime Rates Rise?
March 4, 2008 Richmond Times-Dispatch A. Barton Hinkle “The beginning of wisdom,” says a character in Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, “is the asking of many questions.” But if you’re asking about immigration, good luck trying to find clear-cut answers. The other day a West Coast think tank announced the results of a study on immigration and crime. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, individuals born outside the U.S. are significantly less likely than American-born citizens to wind up in a California prison. People born outside the U.S. constitute 35 percent of California’s population – but only 17 percent of its prison and jail population. The disparity is even bigger in some demographic sectors. U.S.-born adult men “are incarcerated in state prisons at rates up to 3.3 times higher than foreign-born men,” the PPIC says. “Among men ages 18-40 – the age group most likely to commit crime – those born in the United States are 10 times more likely than immigrants
