Immigration and Total Crime Rate in Rural Iowa

• In Event: Immigration, Community Context, and Crime

Abstract

Immigration continues to be a contentious issue as exemplified in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and the popular media’s incessant preoccupation with anecdotal reports of sensational crimes perpetrated by immigrants across the U.S. Existing studies in urban areas have demonstrated that the popularly held belief that immigration causes crime is a mere myth, but there remains little research on the relationship between immigration and crime in rural America. This study examines the relationship between immigration and total crime rate (TCR) using crime data from the Iowa Department of Public Safety and the Iowa Community Indicator Program and demographic and socioeconomic data from the American Community Survey and the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates for the 79 rural counties in Iowa. The result of ordinary least squares regression reveals a statistically insignificant inverse relationship between percent foreign-born and TCR in rural Iowa holding demographic, economic, and social control variables constant, and thus offers support for immigration-crime dissociation theory. In addition, the effect of percent foreign-born on TCR is moderated by poverty rate. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Authors

• David J. Carrothers, Culver Stockton College

• Philip Yang, Texas Woman's University