View source for Immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans

{{Claim
| name = Immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans
| status = False
| claim = Immigrants to the United States, particularly undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans, so immigration drives up crime.
| domain = Crime & Public Safety
| tactic1 = Statistical & Evidentiary Distortion
| tactic2 = Propaganda Technique
| era = Current
| first_seen = 19th century
| origin = A long-standing claim in American politics, applied to successive immigrant groups since the 19th century and prominent in recent debates over immigration and border policy
| last_reviewed = 2026-10-27
}}
The claim that '''immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans''' recurs in debates over immigration. Individual crimes committed by immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are real and sometimes receive extensive coverage. But research using arrest, conviction and incarceration data consistently finds that immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are less likely to commit crimes or be incarcerated than native-born Americans. Studies have also generally found that increases in immigration are not associated with increases in crime in American communities. Data on immigration status are incomplete in many places, which leaves some uncertainty about exact rates, but the broad finding has been consistent across many studies and methods.

== The claim ==
The claim is often made by pointing to specific crimes by immigrants, or to the number of non-citizens in prisons, without comparing rates with the native-born population.

== What the evidence shows ==
* '''Texas data.''' Texas records the immigration status of people arrested. A 2020 study by Michael Light, Jingying He and Jason Robey in the ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' used these data and found that undocumented immigrants had substantially lower felony arrest rates than native-born US citizens for violent, property and drug crimes.
* '''Incarceration over time.''' A 2023 study by economists Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan and colleagues, using census data from 1870 to 2020, found that immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the US-born since 1960, and that the gap has widened.
* '''National Academies.''' A 2015 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to commit crimes, and that neighborhoods with more immigrants tend to have lower crime rates.
* '''Communities.''' Studies of metropolitan areas have generally found that immigration is not linked to increases in violent or property crime, and in some studies is associated with declines.
* '''Limits.''' Data on immigration status are not collected in all jurisdictions, and specific crimes or local patterns may differ from national averages.

== Why it persists ==
High-profile crimes by immigrants receive intense attention and are used to argue for policy changes. Fear of outsiders has been a feature of debates about every major wave of immigration. Raw counts are easier to communicate than rates.

== Lessons for readers ==
* Compare rates, not raw numbers or individual cases.
* Individual crimes are real but do not establish group patterns.
* Consider how data are collected and what is missing.
* Similar claims were made about earlier immigrant groups.
* Policy debates benefit from evidence rather than anecdotes.

== See also ==
* [[New York's bail reform caused a crime wave]]
* [[Superpredators would cause a juvenile crime wave]]
* [[Video shows Paris looters selling stolen goods on the sidewalk]]

== Sources ==
* Michael T. Light, Jingying He and Jason P. Robey, "Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas," ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' 117, no. 51 (2020).
* Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, Elisa Jácome, Santiago Pérez and Juan David Torres, "Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-Born, 1870–2020," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 31440 (2023).
* National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, ''The Integration of Immigrants into American Society'' (National Academies Press, 2015).