Dread and et al,

You might find this interesting and a learning experience.

Foreign-Born vs. Native-Born Men: Who Are More Likely to be Incarcerated?

Inasmuch as conventional theories of crime and incarceration predict higher rates for young adult males from ethnic minority groups with lower educational attainment — characteristics which describe a much greater proportion of the foreign-born population than of the native born — it follows that immigrants would be expected to have higher incarceration rates than natives. And immigrant Mexican men — who comprise fully a third of all immigrant men between 18 and 39, and who have the lowest levels of education — would be expected to have the highest rates.

Data from the 5 percent Public Use Microsample (PUMS) of the 2000 census were used to measure the institutionalization rates of immigrants and natives, focusing on males 18 to 39, most of whom are in correctional facilities. Of the 45.2 million males age 18 to 39, three percent were in federal or state prisons or local jails at the time of the 2000 census — a total of over 1.3 million, in line with official prison statistics at that time.

Surprisingly, at least from the vantage of conventional wisdom, the data show the above hypotheses to be unfounded. In fact, the incarceration rate of the US born (3.51 percent) was four times the rate of the foreign born (0.86 percent). The foreign-born rate was half the 1.71 percent rate for non-Hispanic white natives, and 13 times less than the 11.6 percent incarceration rate for native black men (see Table 1).

The advantage for immigrants vis-à-vis natives applies to every ethnic group without exception. Almost all of the Asian immigrant groups have lower incarceration rates than the Latin American groups (the exception involves foreign-born Laotians and Cambodians, whose rate of 0.92 percent is still well below that for non-Hispanic white natives).

Tellingly, among the foreign born, the highest incarceration rate by far (4.5 percent) was observed among island-born Puerto Ricans, who are not immigrants as such since they are US citizens by birth and can travel to the mainland as natives. If the island-born Puerto Ricans were excluded from the foreign-born totals, the national incarceration rate for the foreign born would drop to 0.68 percent.

Of particular interest is the finding that the lowest incarceration rates among Latin American immigrants are seen for the least educated groups: Salvadorans and Guatemalans (0.52 percent), and Mexicans (0.70 percent). These are precisely the groups most stigmatized as "illegals" in the public perception and outcry about immigration.

Second Generation

Incarceration rates increase significantly for all US-born coethnics without exception. That is most notable for Mexicans, whose incarceration rate increases more than eightfold to 5.9 percent among the US born; for Vietnamese (from 0.46 to 5.6 percent among the US born); and for the Laotians and Cambodians (from 0.92 percent to 7.26 percent, the highest of any group except for native blacks). Almost all of the US born among those of Latin American and Asian origin can be assumed to consist of second-generation persons, with the exception of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, whose numbers may include a sizable number (around 25 percent) of third-generation individuals. (Since 1980, when the questions on parents' country of birth were dropped, the decennial census has not permitted the precise identification of second vs. third or higher generations.)

Thus, while incarceration rates are found to be extraordinarily low among immigrants, they are also seen to rise rapidly by the second generation. Except for the Chinese and Filipinos, the rates of all US-born Latin American and Asian groups exceed that of the referent group of non-Hispanic white natives.


Education and Incarceration Rates

For all ethnic groups, as expected, the risk of imprisonment is highest for men who are high school dropouts (6.91 percent) compared to those who are high school graduates (2.0 percent). However, the differentials in the risk of incarceration by education are observed principally among native-born men, and not immigrants (see Table 2). Among the US born, 9.76 percent of all male dropouts 18 to 39 were in jail or prison in 2000, compared to 2.23 percent among those who had graduated from high school.

But among the foreign born, the incarceration gap by education was much narrower: Only 1.31 percent of immigrant men who were high school dropouts were incarcerated, compared to 0.57 percent of those with at least a high school diploma.

The advantage for immigrants held when broken down by education for every ethnic group. Indeed, nativity emerges in these data as a stronger predictor of incarceration than education. As noted, native-born high school graduates have a higher rate of incarceration than foreign-born, non-high school graduates (2.2 percent to 1.3 percent).



Among US-born men who had not finished high school, the highest incarceration rate by far was seen among non-Hispanic blacks, an astonishing 22.25 percent of whom were imprisoned at the time of the 2000 census; that rate was triple the 7.64 percent among foreign-born black dropouts.

Other high rates among US-born high school dropouts were observed among the Vietnamese (over 16 percent), followed by Colombians (over 12 percent), Cubans and Puerto Ricans (over 11 percent), Mexicans (10 percent), and Laotians and Cambodians (over nine percent). Again, almost all these can be assumed to consist of second-generation persons, as can the large majority of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.


http://www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?ID=403

Length of Time in the United States and Incarceration Rates

The data examined thus far suggest that the process of "Americanization" leads to downward mobility and greater risks of involvement with the criminal justice system among a small but significant segment of this population. Therefore, the question of what happens to immigrant men over time in the United States was explored.

For every group without exception, the longer immigrants had resided in the United States, the higher were their incarceration rates (see Table 3). Here again, the rates of incarceration for island-born Puerto Ricans are significantly higher — regardless of how long they have lived on the US mainland — than the rates for all the immigrant groups listed in Table 3, underscoring their unique status.

Discussion: Confirmatory Results from Other Studies, Now and Then

These results from the 2000 census confirm an earlier study by economists Kristin Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl based on data from the 1980 and 1990 censuses. A new analysis by those authors demonstrates that the results cannot be dismissed as a function of deportations, deterrence, or artifacts of the data (and point instead to self-selection factors in immigration to the United States). Taken together, they provide consistent and compelling evidence over a period of three decades, raising significant questions about conventional theories of acculturation and assimilation.

The finding that incarceration rates are much lower among immigrant men than the national norm, despite their lower levels of education and greater poverty, but increase significantly over time in the United States for those who arrived as children and especially among the second generation, suggests that the process of "Americanization" can lead to downward mobility and greater risk of involvement with the criminal justice system for a significant minority of this population.

Other scholars, such as sociologist Robert J. Sampson and colleagues, have addressed similar questions concerning immigration and crime and conclude that increased immigration is actually a major factor associated with lower crime rates. Sampson's Chicago study revealed that Latin American immigrants are less violent and less likely than the second and third generations to commit crimes even when they live in dense communities with high rates of poverty. Studies by sociologists Matthew Lee and Ramiro Martínez of homicides in three high-immigration border cities (San Diego, El Paso, and Miami), and of drug violence in Miami and San Diego, have come to similar conclusions. Their findings further refute putative linkages between immigration and criminality.

Relevant data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (known as Add Health) has further facilitated the analysis of intragenerational and intergenerational differences in health characteristics and risk behaviors among a nationally representative sample of adolescents.

Studies by sociologist Kathleen Mullan Harris, and by sociologists Hoan Bui and Ornuma Thingniramol, have found that second-generation youth were more prone to engage in risk behaviors (delinquency, violence, and substance abuse) than foreign-born youth. Among foreign-born youth, the longer their time in and exposure to the United States, the greater was their propensity to engage in each of the risk behaviors measured. Controlling for socioeconomic status, family structure, degree of parental supervision, and neighborhood contexts actually increased the protective aspects of the immigrant first generation on both health and risk behavior indices. In their analyses, every first-generation nationality had significantly fewer health problems and engaged in fewer risk behaviors than the referent group of native non-Hispanic whites.

In a sense, these systematic findings should not come as news, for they are not new —merely forgotten and overruled by popular myth. In the first three decades of the 20th century, during another era of mass immigration, three major government commissions came to much the same conclusions.

The Industrial Commission of 1901, the [Dillingham] Immigration Commission of 1911, and the [Wickersham] National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement of 1931, each sought to measure how immigration resulted in increases in crime. Instead each found lower levels of criminal involvement among the foreign born but higher levels among their native-born counterparts, noting that a disproportionate number of the incarcerated had foreign-born parents. If there was an "immigrant crime problem" it was not found among the immigrants, but among their US-born sons, who had a different frame of reference than their parents and faced an entirely different set of circumstances.

Escrito por: lugomar, 1 Nov 2010 4:04
De: República Dominicana
AUXILIOOOOO!!!!!!!! POR FAVOR Sr. DIRECTOR DE MIGRACION: Mueva al EJERCITO NACIONAL en contra de la migración ILEGAL haitiana. PUEBLO DOMINICANO, paremosnos de pie y evitemos eso y saquemos a los indocumentados haitianos como lo hacen todos los paises del mundo. Y A LOS DOMINICANOS TRAIDORES Y ANTINACIONALISTAS, CASTIGUEMOSLOS CON TODO EL PESO DE LA LEY. Sugiero: MODIFICAR URGENTEMENTE LAS PENAS EN CONTRA DE LOS QUE TRAFICAN CON HAITIANOS ILEGALES. No vamos a tener país en algunos años, cojamos esto como una amenaza a la soberanía nacional, cojámos esto muy en serio. Nos vamos a joder

Atabey states

Dread and et al,

that should read..Dread et al. you have a masters degree, by your admission. you should at least know that one. there is no and, because that is what et means

i got you to respond. Pavlov was right

Now, the next step is to get you to read the content, and answer. A significantly more difficult proposition. But I'll try.

Atabey, i have read that article, and many similar ones, long before you bought your masters degree at WalMart.

Good one!

I remember reading a civil war quote from Robert E. Lee saying something like this:
Where ever you see blacks the surroundings around him are always worsening. When you see white usually the surrounding is flourishing.

reality hurts guys.

Totally racist remark! I think today Lee would contradict himself and be right!