Immigration, Sanctuary Counties, and Crime: A Safety Net for Vulnerable Populations?

The literature for the relationship between immigration and crime has been growing in recent decades, but the research on how immigration sanctuary policies are associated with crime is relatively underdeveloped. There is much theory that describes how immigration sanctuary policies could make the police more effective and efficient due to increased correspondence levels, which also has the potential to increase crime reporting rates. The current study advances the extant literature on the relationship between immigration sanctuary policies and crime. To do so, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression techniques are run to analyze how the presence of immigration sanctuary policies along with various demographic variables are related to different crime types. Results support extant literature showcasing a null relationship between immigration sanctuary policies and murder rates and violent crime rates. However, results also show a statistically significant positive relationship between immigration sanctuary policies and robbery rates, burglary rates, and property crime rates. The latter findings are theorized to coincide with the “Walking ATM” phenomenon as well as crime reporting sensitivity (CRS) bias, which showcases that these results might not be as simple as they seem. Ultimately, it is found that immigration sanctuary policies have the potential to act as a safety net for vulnerable immigrant populations while also potentially improving the well-being of communities overall. These findings suggest that future research should conduct further statistical analysis based on differences in county sizes as well as immigration history in counties (or other units of analysis). These findings also suggest that future research should attempt to have a longitudinal research design while also analyzing changes in clearance rates over time.