Theoretical perspective/Literature review
Various researches such as the one conducted by Merton (1938) have shown that individuals tend to resort to crime if they cannot obtain decent livelihoods by legal methods (Chiricos 1987; Thornberry Christenson 1984). Illegal immigrants contribute to the increasing rates of unemployment in the United States and this therefore leads to increased crime-rates.
Camarata (2004) has shown that illegal immigrants account for over 20% of the individual in federal prisons. Studies have also shown that a very large number of accidents caused by driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol have been linked to Hispanics (Cantor and Land 1985).
An article carried in the Austin American Statesmen in 2003 reported that, “Latinos account for nearly half of 2002 Austin drunken driving arrests even though they make up only about 21 percent of Austin’s driving population” (Sum and Khatiwada 2006). Nationwide statistics from the Texas Department of public safety have also revealed that over 40% of the individuals apprehended in 2002 for DUI were Latino while 38% of the arrested individuals were unemployed (Sullivan 2006).
Aside from drug-related crimes, it is worth noting that the unemployed illegal immigrants are responsible for other types of criminal activities (Hughes and Carter 1981). In 2007, over 21% of the criminals sentenced in Arizona County were illegal immigrants. Of these criminals, 18% were accused of violent crime, 35% of kidnapping and 47% were sentenced for car theft (Swain 2007).
Illegal immigrants were also linked to almost 90% of all identity stealing cases and over 50% of document forgery. Coming towards the close of 2003, over 250,000 illegal immigrants had been charged in courts for various offences and sentences to prison. Reports have also revealed that in Los Angeles, 96% of the over 1000 warrants for murder suspects in 2002 have been for illegal immigrants and that over 90% of the individuals charged with homicide have been unemployed.
It is also important to appreciate that most of the criminal activities committed to immigrants by fellow immigrants tend to be underreported mainly because of the fear that immigration officials may be involved hence deporting both the offender and the victim (Freeman 1983; Harrison and Beck 2006; Horowitz 1997).
Study approach
The research will be based on both primary and secondary data. As far as primary data is concerned, empirical data will be collected to show the impact of project management strategies in a particular institution and how it could effectively be used to serve as a guide for other organisations that would like to make the switch.
In such a scientific field, the strength lies in the figures and particularly the numbers obtained from real life scenarios to support collected evidence. With this knowledge in mind, effort will be made to obtain relevant information to the particular topic in question and this will be accompanied by proper citation.
Secondary data will be extracted from books and journals. The criteria of selection for the literature will be the relevance to the research topic as well as the year of publication. Both public and private libraries as well as online libraries will be visited in order to access the data. This research will be partly evidence based and partly founded on professional research by professionals in the field. Various articles will be studied in order to provide background information which will essentially give credibility to the final essay.
Information from the publications will serve to provide explanation as regards the internal machinations of financial departments of the company. This will be very crucial information that will make the research report appeal to both professionals and the general public. For the latter, it may require that some of the information obtained from the books and other publications be broken down into simple language and at the same time illustrations drawn from the most successful strategies for project management.
Reasons for Selecting the Above Methodology
For any professional topic, chances are that extensive research has been carried out by professionals in the field before. Consequently, in order to establish the backbone of a given research project, it is only necessary that extensive review of literature be carried before identifying seeking first hand information from the field.
The latter, i.e. information collected from the field is also necessary since it helps give professional credibility to the project. Combining results from both sources would serve to foster their symbiotic relationship with one offering background information and the other presenting up-to-date information on the topic.
Expected outcome
The outcome expected out of this research process is results that would make government officials appreciate the impact of unemployment and illegal immigration on the well being of the country. The research and subsequent paper will show the various loopholes which if sealed can increase the effectiveness of state security management.
Research process plan
The first step in conducting the research will come in the form of extensive review of literature from various secondary sources. Information on the topic of unemployment, illegal immigration and their linkage to criminal activity will be collected from books, state records, journals, Magazines, conference proceedings and websites.
The second step in the process is the collection of data directly from the field. This will to a large extent depend on various forms of interviews including one-to-one interviews as well as the use of questionnaires. Some of the people expected to be targeted for this part of the process include security specialists and administrators from various arms of government, as well as qualified state security analysts.
The above two steps would make it easy to come up with a survey question which will guide us into the third step of the process. In this stage, an analysis of the data obtained shall be carried out and the challenges that are raised regarding the process of project management shall be picked out and effectively compared with the strategic approaches for dealing with them.
Objectives
The Objectives of the research were to:
- To analyze the relation between illegal immigration and crime
- To analyze the relation between unemployment and crime
Hypotheses
- There is a correlation between illegal immigration/unemployment and criminal activity.
- The unemployed and illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crime as compared to the employed and legal immigrants.
Research implications
If there is a direct correlation between organizational structure and project management, it is only imperative that the government establishes strategies to help in enhancing the border security and creating employment opportunities in order to reduce instances of crime rate
Research process
Quantitative methods will be used to collect data. These are basically strategies developed to help in analyzing natural phenomena. The questionnaire is one of the main instruments for gathering data using a social survey design. It is completed by the respondent. The questionnaire, which is one of the quantitative survey methods, will be used in this research in order to collect the primary data.
Because of the nature of the study only online questionnaires will be used. The reasons for using an online questionnaire are that compared with the interview, the online questionnaire is cheaper to administer, quicker to administer and convenient for respondents
Questionnaire development
The development of questionnaire passed through three stages; the planning stage, design stage and pilot stage. I will, therefore, follow these stages for the questionnaire. In this research, the questionnaire was designed in relation to the literature review: the questions will be formulated as open-ended questions to answer the research questions.
The questions considered will illustrate the relationship between illegal immigration, unemployment and crime rate. All the questions will be formulated to measure (directly or indirectly) the respondent opinion of the security around him/her.
Furthermore, the layout of the questionnaire will be designed in such a way that the layout is clear as well as attractive for respondents. Industry standards like five-point scales will be used in the majority of questions to make it easer to collect the data. Some experiments recommend that demographic questions should be at the end of questionnaires because the data is sensitive; therefore the researcher will have to take that into consideration in the design of this questionnaire.
In addition, ambiguous terms will be avoided in the questions, as well as any long, repetitious, leading or double-barreled items, and negative questions which could essentially reduce the effectiveness of the project.
The scores will ranges between Almost Never True (1) – Almost Always True (5) and the results will be analyzed with regard to its Related Problem. These results will be classified as Almost Always True (5), Frequently True (4), Occasionally True (3), Seldom True (2), Almost Never True (1).
Analysis of results
The number of samples should be at least 30 and the Mean and Variance of each of the three sections will be found for EACH of the Samples collected. Assuming that the Variance of each of the sections for a particular sample is small, that means all the answers gave a similar direction (for that particular sample).
If the variance of any of the sections was high, then there might be a question that is not clear or not related directly to the problem, so the answer of that question of that section in that sample should be compared with the answer of the same question in the same section of other samples and then decide to delete that question or not upon the result of the comparison.
Then, the Mean and the Variance of each of the three Sections will be found for ALL the samples. Assuming a small Variance, that means all the samples agreed on the existence or non-existence of the problem related to that section.
Accordingly, the Mean of the samples of that section will be compared to see if it is closer to (5-10) or (20-25) and then decide upon the strength and severity of the problem existence because of using the Balanced Matrix Structure. Why a Range of (5-25)? Because 5=Least Value of (1) for Five Questions in the same section. 25= Highest Value of (5) for Five Questions in the same section. Any thing between, should be analyzed (10-15 or 15-20).
Conclusion
Studies have proven that criminal activity can be directly linked to both unemployment and illegal immigration. This paper has looked at various statistical data on the impact of unemployment and illegal immigration and crime rate in the United States.
The data collected has shown that individuals in employment and immigrants who enter America through legal means commit less crime as compared to their counterparts with no jobs or those who enter the country illegally. However, more research is still needed on the topic, particularly because there is a lot of data countering these researches findings.
Reference List
Camarota, Steven A. 2004. The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget. USA: Center for Immigration Studies.
Camarota, Steven A. 2001. Immigration From Mexico: Assessing the Impact on the United States. USA: Center for Immigration Studies.
Cantor, David and Land, Kenneth. C. 1985. “Unemployment and crime rates in the post-World War II U.S.: A theoretical and empirical analysis.” American Sociological Review, 50, 317-32.
Chiricos, Theodore. G. 1987. “Rates of crime and unemployment: An analysis of aggregate research evidence.” Social Problems, 34, 187-212.
Freeman, Richard. B. 1983. “Crime and unemployment.” Wilson James Q. (Ed.), Crime and public policy. San Francisco: ICS Press. 89-106.
Harrison, Paige M. and Alan Beck J. 2006.. Prisoners in 2004. Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005, p. 8; US Dept. of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons. “Quick Facts about the Bureau of Prisons.” Washington, DC: BOP
Horowitz, Carl F. 1997. “An Examination of U.S. Immigration Policy And Serious Crime.” USA: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Urban Institute
Hughes, Michael. and Carter, Timothy. J. 1981. “A declining economy and sociological theories of crime: Predictions and explications.” K. N. Wright (Ed.), Crime and criminal justice in a declining economy. Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn, & Hain. 5-26.
Merton, Robert K. 1938. “Social structure and anomie.” American Sociological Review 3, 672-82.
Sullivan, Bob. 2006. “Hidden Cost of Illegal Immigration: ID Theft.” United States: MSNBC
Sum, Andrew P. and Ishwar Khatiwada. 2006. The Impact of New Immigrants on Young Native-Born Workers, 2000-2005. USA: Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder Swain, Carol M. 2007. Debating Immigration. Cambridge University Press,
Thornberry, Terrence P. and Christenson, Richard. L. 1984. “Unemployment and criminal involvement: An investigation of reciprocal causal structures.” American Sociological Review, 49, 398-411.