Undocumented Immigration Sociology

Green’s (2016) findings were quite astonishing. Most criminal activities were found to not be committed by immigrant populations, and undocumented immigrants had committed criminal activities at an even lesser rate. In fact, Green (2016) noted that there had been no statistically significant relationship between immigration populations, violent crime, or drug-related crime. Poverty, here, however, did appear to have a strong relationship with violent crime compared to drug crime offenses. There was a weak positive relationship with undocumented immigrants and drug arrest rates, including sales and possession. Green (2016) mentions that although there is a slight positive relationship between drug crimes and undocumented immigrants, he believes

Immigrants both documented and undocumented have been able to promote diversity throughout the entirety of the United States. Such a thing may open people’s minds and become more receptive and open to new cultures and experiences. Additionally, one must not forget about the contributions immigrants bring to the U.S. economy. Borjas (1995) states that with the presence of immigrant workers both documented and undocumented in the labor market, makes the U.S. economy an estimated 11 percent or 1.6 trillion dollars increase per year. Hanson (2007) further notes that immigrant’s aid in jobs that native-born Americans may not be able to fulfill. This is because, a given type of worker may be scarce either because the U.S. supply of his skill type is low relative to the rest of the world, as with workers who have little schooling, or because the U.S. demand for his skill type is high relative to the rest of the world, as with computer scientists and engineers. They further note that between 1960 and 2000, the amount of working-age native-born U.S. citizens with less than twelve years of schooling fell from 50 to 12 percent (Hanson, 2007). Furthermore, it has been found that over time, although many native-born citizens believe that immigrants may take their job opportunities away from them, research says otherwise. Costa, Cooper, and Shierholz (2014) report that in the long run, immigrants do not, in fact, reduce native employment rates. However, from a short-term perspective, they may slightly reduce native employment, because the economy takes time to adjust to new influxes of immigration. Further, they mention that many immigrants in the United States happen to be small business owners. They make up 18 percent of the small business population, and by doing such; they are able to provide jobs to native-born citizens (Costa,