Introduction
Illegal immigrants are those people who enter a country without proper documents. Borkar (1) states that illegal immigration will take place whenever citizens from one country move to live in another without having the documents that allow them to stay in that country lawfully.
More often than not, this leads to numerous problems (Borkar 1). Increased crime rate is one of the problems linked to illegal immigration. According to Borkar, the illegal immigrants get frustrated when they do not get their dream jobs and consequently turn to illegal activities so as to survive (Borkar 1).
Quain (1) points out that both national security and local economy are affected by illegal immigration. However, while supporters claim that illegal immigrants are the ones who fill up most of the low paying jobs and in the end benefit the economy, those are against are convinced that illegal immigration will increase crime and cause job loss for legal citizens (Quain 1).
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), any one who enters the U.S. by violating the immigration laws is referred to as an illegal alien. This term is used as it is considered to be legally accepted and correct by the Government of the United States (FAIR 1).
Studies by FAIR have estimated that in the year 2007 the population of illegal aliens was more than 13 million people. This was an increment of 2 million immigrants from the population in 2004; The Center for Immigration Studies established the number of illegal immigrants to be 10 million people back then (FAIR 1).
FAIR (1) observed that even though the illegal immigrants would work and later contribute to the American economy through taxation, adversaries of illegal immigration have argued that if the jobs done by illegal aliens were done by the Americans, much more revenue would be collected by the government.
FAIR (1) also pointed out that the federal government is made to shoulder a burden of $28.795 billion annually to meet immigration costs although this is supplemented by contributions by the municipalities. This paper discusses the relationship that exists between the increased number of illegal immigrants in a state in the United States and the rate of crime in that particular state.
Literature Review
According to FAIR (1), illegal immigration is responsible for the increased insecurity at the borders. This is an opinion that is also shared by Orrenius and Coronado (3) and they have tried to explain that the link between the increased number of illegal immigrants and criminal activities may be more rampant at the Border States unlike in the other states.
One of the reasons they have given has to do with the assumption that illegal immigrants apparently get involved in crime more than the Americans themselves. Secondly, illegal immigrants are easy prey and hence the most likely target for attackers as they would do anything to keep away from the authorities.
Thirdly, illegal immigrants will make use of the services offered by smugglers who in the process of doing their job, end up committing even more crimes. According to the classical criminology theory, people tend to get involved in criminal activities when there are many benefits that are expected to come from the crime than the associated costs.
In the case of illegal immigrants, they will freely want to participate in crime so as to evade the justice system. Orrenius and Coronado, however, also add that it is quite difficult to actually prove that immigrants, whether legal or illegal are responsible for a greater number of criminal activities than the natives (3).
Claims of the existing link between crime and the number of illegal immigrants in a border state can therefore be strongly supported by the last two assumptions made above. Judicial Watch (1) also observed that many criminal gangs are made up of illegal immigrants and these are responsible for many of the violent criminal activities that happen in the United States. Drugs distribution forms part of the many crimes committed by the illegal immigrants (Judicial Watch 1).
Some people have, however, argued that an increase in the number of illegal immigrants does not necessarily lead to a rise in the rate of crime. Kingsbury (1) also pointed out that the increasing number of immigrants in the United States should not be blamed for rising rate of crime.
This argument is supported by a research which established that immigrants in California are less likely to commit crime than the natives. This became obvious when it became apparent that the number of immigrants in California who were serving prison sentences was quite small despite the population being considerably high (Kingsbury 1).
Another research done between the 1980s and 1990s also indicated that the number of crimes committed by immigrants was far much less than those where the natives were involved (Horowitz 1). An analysis of the FBI records in six major cities in the United States, pointed out that the number of aliens made up about 19 percent of the total number of arrests that were made in the year 1985.
Hagan and Palloni (368) have argued that the issue of the involvement of immigrants in crime is made complex by the fact that immigrants may not be given the same treatment as the natives in the criminal justice system. Chances are that immigrants may be either more or less vulnerable to arrests and imprisonment than the natives. The resulting statistics may thus be biased and not representative of the exact situation as it is (Hagan & Palloni 368).
Taylor (1) identified a number of criminal activities where illegal immigrants have participated and among others, these include; identity theft drunk driving and human smuggling. After illegal immigrants have been smuggled through the borders into the United States, they will always have illegal documents waiting for them to facilitate their illegal settlement. A number of them have also been accused of drunk driving and involvement in sexual immorality (Taylor 1).
Methodology
This section discusses the study design. Horn, Snyder, Coverdale, Louie and Roberts (1), identified a number of qualitative methods of gathering information. These include historical research, action research, case study, participant observation, and grounded theory.
Although case study is very appropriate for this research, it is quite involving, expensive and it will require one to identify places to be visited to gather the data needed. Case study is also a preferable method for this research given that the United States government has been working hard to create channels for the immigration department to gather information on all illegal aliens in prisons (Weissinger 1).
In addition, the Federal government has also tried to establish the number of illegal immigrants through by using some parameters when during census for illegal immigrants. Among others, these parameters include; the status of an individual’s citizenship, the year of arrival in America, their age, and country of origin (Camarota 1).
This particular research makes use of historical research based on data that has been gathered in the past and stored for reference. Secondary sources of data made available through research done by different authors are used to carry out this research (Horn et al. 1).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, we can argue that an increase in the number of immigrants to a state may not necessarily imply a corresponding increment in the rate of crime in that state. The arguments that have been presented in this paper indicate that while some states may be affected by the rising population of illegal immigrants, there are others that will remain unshaken by the influx of illegal immigrants. This is further made difficult by the fact that statistics collected concerning illegal immigrants may not be fully dependable.
Works Cited
Borkar, Rujuta. Illegal Immigration Problems. Jersey City, United States: Buzzle.com. 2011. Web.
Camarota, Steven A. The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget. San Diego: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. 2004. Web.
FAIR. Immigration Issues. Washington, DC: Federation for American Immigration Reform. Web.
Hagan, John and Palloni, Alberto. Immigration and Crime in the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. 2011. Web.
Horn, Catherine., Snyder, Blanca Plazas., Coverdale, John H., Louie., Alan K., and Roberts, Laura Weiss. Educational Research Questions and Study Design. Arlington, VA: Academic Psychiatry. 2009. Web.
Horowitz, Carl F. An Examination of U.S. Immigration Policy and Serious Crime. Washington, D.C: Center for Immigration Studies. 2001. Web.
Judicial Watch. Illegal Immigrant Gangs Commit Most U.S. Crime. Washington, D.C.: Judicial Watch. 2010. Web.
Kingsbury, Kathleen. Immigration: No Correlation with Crime. New York: Time Inc. 2011. Web.
Orrenius, Pia M. and Coronado, Roberto. The Effect of Illegal Immigration and Border Enforcement on Crime Rates along the U.S.-Mexico Border. San Diego: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. 2005. Web.
Quain, Sampson. Illegal Immigration Research Paper Topics. Santa Monica, CA: Demand Media, Inc. 2011. Web.
Taylor, Jameson. Illegal Immigration: Drugs, Gangs and Crime. Australia: Nexbis. 2011. Web.
Weissinger, George. The Illegal Alien Problem: Enforcing the Immigration Laws. New York: Information Technology Associates. 2001. Web.