The relationship between immigration and crime has been a subject of extensive research, political discourse, and public debate.
Immigrants are disproportionately represented in prison populations in many Western countries, though notable exceptions exist, such as the United States. In Europe and other regions, higher representation in prisons among immigrants, particularly Muslim populations, has been documented. However, some of the factors contributing to these trends include imprisonment for migration-related offenses and systemic bias in policing and judicial processes, which may inflate crime statistics for immigrant populations relative to their real criminal rate. Research suggests that public perception often exaggerates the connection between immigration and crime, influenced by sensationalised media coverage and political rhetoric. This can result in stricter immigration controls, as well as harsher immigration policies like family separation; along with a potential increase in hate crimes against immigrant communities.
Factors Research relating to immigration and crime has been described as generally showing mixed results.
While immigrants are overrepresented in prison populations in many Western countries, with notable exceptions such as the United States, some studies fail to show a causal effect of immigration on overall crime rates. Other studies have found that immigration increases crime under certain circumstances, such as if immigrants have poor prospects in the labor market or labor restrictions.
Some factors may affect 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, would need to be excluded from the analysis of crime statistics 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). Some immigrants might 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. Some 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. Granting legal status to undocumented immigrants might reduce crime rates among that population due to factors like greater job market opportunities for the legal immigrants. Some scholars suggested the relationship between crime and the legal status of immigrants was understudied. Demographic characteristics like being young, male, and poorly-educated can increase the likelihood of imprisonment among immigrants. Immigrants could become substitutes for natives in crime markets, resulting in no change to the overall amount of crime taking place. "Irregular aliens (that is, those not officially registered by the appropriate process in that nation) would be counted in the share of immigrants in the prison population, but not in the share of immigrants in the resident population."
Trends According to migration scientist Hein de Haas in 2023, "violent crime is decreasing in almost the entire Western world. In addition, studies show that migrants are actually less criminal on average. This is because first-generation migrants are often people who want to build a new future". De Haas noted an overrepresentation of certain immigrant groups in crime statistics, which he attributed to ethnic profiling and some second-generation immigrants who have no future prospects.
According to a 2024 article migrants in 30 countries, many (though not the United States, UK, Australia or New Zealand) have higher share of prison populations compared to native-born populations. Among immigrants, younger and less-educated men, as well as those with undocumented or irregular legal status, have a higher propensity to commit crimes compared to those with documented status.
Terrorism
As of 2020, the relationship between immigration and terrorism was 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."
A paper by a group of German political scientists and economists, covering 1980–2010, found 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 a risk trade-off: increased immigration laws could decrease the influx of migrants and therefore the potential number of future terrorist attacks, but diminished acceptance by the host country of the migrants increased the terror risk of those already in the country. 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 agree with Olivier Roy that repression of minority groups, such as Muslims, makes it easier for terrorist organizations to recruit from those minority groups. Roy has argued that the burkini bans and secularist policies of France provoked religious violence in France, which French scholar Gilles Kepel disputed saying that Britain did not have those policies and still suffered several jihadist attacks in 2017.
Hand grenades in Sweden Although Swedish police do not record or release the ethnicityof convicted criminals, there has been a major increase in the number of hand grenade incidents in recent years. The explosions are used by gang members to intimidate rival gangs. Linda H Staaf, head of intelligence at National Operations Department, said in 2019 that the perpetrators were from poor areas and many are "perhaps second- or third-generation immigrants".
Perception
Research suggests that people overestimate the relationship between immigration and criminality. Two 2023 studies, one of Switzerland and one of Chile, have documented how a rise in immigration leads to a rise in fears about immigrant crime without any corresponding rise in crime, with authors of both studies suggesting that media competition led to the overemphasis of immigrant crime narratives and perceptions.
A January 2024 survey in the U.S. found that 57% of Americans believe migrants lead to more crime, which some experts attribute to anecdotal media stories that lack context. Graham Ousey believes the perception stems from flashpoint events that politicians use to push up the myth that immigrants create more crime. Donald Trump has been the most prominent promoter of the false link between immigration and crime, according to the Associated Press. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera argues it is a cornerstone of the MAGA platform.
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 statistics. 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. A study of coverage of refugees in the Guardian and the Times in the UK from 2015 to 2018 found that media portrayals made Muslim refugees seem like threats to the economy or security and exaggerated differences between these refugees and the native population.
The Economist reported in 2018 that some right-wing parties make claims about a connection between immigration and crime, even though the issues are mostly unrelated.
Politics