There is a general perception that crime rate is high in large cities because of immigration. However, new immigration helps in minimizing high rate of crime. Since the rate of immigration has increased throughout the past decades, it may be assumed that criminal activities have been aggravated by immigration. The authority in the past had taken serious actions towards minor offences.
A good example was a woman called Rosa Parks. She was jailed and fined $ 14 just because she refused to offer her seat to a white man (Associated Press, par. 1). She later became an icon of civil rights movement. Many people in the United States followed that movement and later changed the nation. During 1950s, a minor offence like not giving a seat to a white person was a serious crime worthy of a jail term.
The relationship between immigration and crime rate is not as negative as it may be thought of. According to latest findings, the relationship between the two parameters has positive effects (Laufer and Adler 448). Negative notion towards immigrants was a result of racism in big cities like Philadelphia.
The more the crimes and defiant behaviors increased in big cities, the more the town dwellers hated immigrants. They fail to understand that crime is not so much connected with immigration but with human attitude toward life and work.
The theory that new immigrants result more crimes is wrong. However, high rate of crime is not connected directly to immigration but to other factors that may be found within the native inhabitants. People living in those cities need to understand that there are several factors that had contributed high rate of crime.
Therefore, new immigration may help in curbing high rate of crime in well established cities. As a matter of fact, immigrants are not the source of disorder and crime in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and other cities.
The crime rate in major cities of U.S is lower because of the new immigrants. Criminal- justice experts claimed that the high rate of crime is due to lack of sufficient new immigrants (Schaefer 32). It is clear that many immigrants moved into big cities to seek employment. This attitude will help them to avoid dangers from any criminal activities.
In the past few years, many U.S cities were interested in unskilled laborers to do manual jobs. If immigrants are busy working, how then will they find time to spend in criminal activities? In addition, the United States government has inclusive reforms agenda to make sure that immigrants make contributions to America’s achievement as a nation. The authority expects them to meet high ethical standards by minimizing rate of crimes (Abraham, Hamilton and Meissner 153).
To recap it all, there will be no time to spend in crime as long as new immigrants are working. This means that hardworking immigrants will help to curb the rate of crime bearing in mind that high rate of crime should not be rated on the population of immigrants in cities. However, it should be based on unemployment or underemployment.
This will be the best benchmark to use when assessing and evaluating the overall contribution of immigrant population towards crime. In addition, the relationship between new immigrant population and rise in crime rate should be based on other factors such as availability of arms, local armed gangs as well as the states of policy reforms on security.
Works Cited
Abraham, Spencer, Lee Hamilton and Doris, Meissner. Immigration and America’s future: A New Chapter. New York: Migration Policy Institute, 2006, Print.
Associated Press. Rosa Parks, matriarch of civil rights, dies at 92: Catalyst of U.S. drive for racial equality lived in Detroit. 25 Oct. 2005. Web.
Laufer, Mueller and Fionel, Adler. Criminology. New York: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 2001.Print.
Schaefer, Richard. Sociology: A Brief Introduction (9th ed). New York: McGraw Hill, 2011.Print.